A Science of Otherness?: Rereading the History of Western and US Criminological Thought 9781529209136

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A S C I E NCE O F OTH ER NE S S? R E R E ADI NG THE HISTORY O F WE ST ERN A ND US C R IM I NO LO G ICA L THOUGHT YOAV MEHOZ AY

A SCIENCE OF OTHERNESS? Rereading the History of Western and US Criminological Thought Yoav Mehozay

First published in Great Britain in 2024 by Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1–​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +​44 (0)117 374 6645 e: bup-​[email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2024 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​0912-​9 hardcover ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​0914-​3 ePub ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​0913-​6 ePdf The right of Yoav Mehozay to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Anat Saacks Front cover image: iStock/​ivansmuk Bristol University Press use environmentally responsible print partners. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

To my three special Ns: Elinor (Noni), Naomi, and Nathan

Contents Acknowledgements

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1 2

1 21

3 4 5 6 7

Introduction: Criminology as Otherness? The Classical School: Otherness as an Ideology of an Imaginary Bourgeois Society The Early Days of Positivist Criminology: An Ideology of Universalism and Otherness Two Versions of Otherness: Between Eugenics and Modernization Theory Otherness as Subculture Managing the Other: Otherness in Practice Conclusion: A Science of Otherness?

Notes References Index

42 63 81 104 124 138 144 158

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Acknowledgements Writing is never easy for me, and committing to a book manuscript is without question frightening. Yet I do not believe there is a greater privilege or reward than completing such a project, particularly in the current accelerated academic environment. I am grateful I had the opportunity to carve time for this enterprise. And although I can never detach from the feeling that I could have done more, it is a joy to see the completion and publication of the manuscript. I wish to thank the many people who supported me and helped make this book possible. This project started during my sabbatical year, which I spent as a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Special thanks to Jonathan Simon for the invitation to join the Center for a year. I also thank Rosann Greenspan, who was the executive director at the time, and Erika Espinoza. Your hospitality and generosity went above and beyond. During my time in Berkeley I made many good friends, who shared advice through engaging conversations. I am particularly indebted to Tony Platt for his friendship and support. Tony and Jonathan invited me to join their Carceral Studies Working Group, and pushed me to articulate what became the prospectus for this project. It was in one of the meetings of the Carceral Studies group, at Tony and Cecilia O’Leary’s warm and charming home, that I first presented the outline of this book. I also want to thank the brilliant then PhD candidates Chase Burton (today Assistant Professor of Law and Society at Leiden University in the Netherlands), Johann Koehler (now Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics), and Gil Rothschild Elyassi, who is now my colleague at the University of Haifa. I learned so much from you all. Thanks are due also to Malcolm Feeley, Alessandro De Giorgi, and Dario Melossi for your thoughts and suggestions.

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I extend heartfelt appreciation to my wonderful colleagues in the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa. I am grateful for your stimulation and comradeship. Special thanks to Ely Aaronson, Itamar Mann, Gil Rothschild Elyassi (once more), and Eli Cook from the University of Haifa’s School of History for reading and commenting on parts of the book. I am also grateful to my colleagues and the administrative personnel at the School of Criminology. And, of course, I cannot forget the students in my graduate seminar, who were patient and supportive as I tried out different parts of the manuscript. This book would not have its current form without you. More people were involved and helped me throughout this process. Huge gratitude is due to my brilliant dear old friend, Eran Fisher, for his friendship and endless support. Also, this book would not have been possible without my academic manuscript editor, Meira Ben-​ Gad. Meira, your contribution was invaluable. I also must express my gratitude to the people at Bristol University Press, especially Rebecca Tomlinson, who started this journey with me, and Becky Taylor, who continued to accompany me through the publication process with Grace Carroll and Angela Gage. And big thanks to my extremely talented sister, Anat Saacks, who designed the cover of the book (the second time she has done me this service). Last, but certainly not least, I want to thank my dear family –​my parents; my lifelong love and partner, Elinor; and our amazing children, Naomi and Nathan. I love you all. This book is dedicated to you.

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Introduction: Criminology as Otherness? Criminology and penology,1 as realms of knowledge, are at the heart of the human condition, and crucial for the understanding of people as social beings. This was true when knowledge of sin and its punishment was advanced through theological language –​think about the first stories of the Old Testament –​and remained true when it took the form of scientific knowledge. This knowledge plays a pivotal role, albeit not an exclusive one, in shaping regimes of social control. It provides a conceptual framework as well as vital legitimacy for social organization and governance, essential for setting norms and rules, articulating epistemes for human behaviour and action, and devising justifiable sanctions and use of violence against those who are regarded as posing a threat or violating the public peace. Moreover, criminological knowledge, which is diverse and ever-​evolving, has played a key role in absorbing, reflecting, reacting to, and shaping the great transformations of modernity. It is thus rather surprising that such a pivotal realm of knowledge has not received much reflexive and historical attention. Indeed, relatively little has been written on the history of criminology (Rafter: 2011: 143). But, as Nicole Rafter commented, ‘If criminology is to fully mature as a field of study, it needs to develop a clear sense of its own history’ (2004: 736). Recent scholarship is starting to fill this gap –​see, for example, ‘New directions in the history of criminology’, written by Richard Wetzell (2017), and David Churchill, Henry Yeomans and Iain Channing’s Historical Criminology (2021), which also offers a good review of prior works. Still, there have been

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relatively few macro introspective reflections about the state, nature, and meaning of criminological thought. In this respect, prominent voices within criminology, across a spectrum of analytical orientations, have expressed frustration at the field’s limited historical analysis and self-​examination, and have called for more scholarly work (see, inter alia, Nelken, 1994; Braithwaite, 2000; Savelsberg and Sampson, 2002; Laub, 2004; Weisburd and Piquero, 2008; Bursik, 2009; Hagan, 2010; Cullen, 2011). This book aims to advance an introspective account of the state of the field of Western criminology, centring on the production of criminological knowledge since the classical school, especially as it developed over the last century in the United States.2 More precisely, I follow and analyse mainstream Western criminology, particularly Anglo-​Saxon criminology textbooks, and what are regarded within this scholarly framework as the main canonical texts. I shall elaborate more on this study’s corpus; but briefly, I review three main incarnations of Western criminological knowledge: the classical, positivist–​etiological, and administrative or control–​managerial, which are, of course, not always mutually exclusive. The translation of this knowledge into policy is not part of the focus of the book, although I address this subject at times, mostly in passing. My objective is to make an incisive contribution by rereading criminological knowledge as ideology, and particularly through the analytical application of otherness. It has already been argued that ‘The identification and construction of dangerous and criminal subjectivities based on notions of otherness has been at the heart of criminological enquiry’ (Aliverti et al, 2021: 305). Below I shall detail what I mean and how I intend to use the concept of otherness. At this point, I will note only that I expand on David Garland’s definition of positivist criminology as a ‘criminology of the other’ (1996, 1999, 2001). I will make the case that Western criminological knowledge is, to a substantive extent, knowledge of otherness; that the production of this knowledge always echoes and manufactures an ‘other’. To put it differently, I read criminological knowledge as othering, where othering is a discursive tool for estrangement, discrimination, and even exclusion, but also for paternalistic management. As accepted knowledge that enjoys symbolic capital, this othering serves as a discourse of responsibilization, in the sense that it helps deflect responsibility. Accordingly, social problems are represented as rooted in the 2

INTRODUCTION

otherness of a given population, rather than as stemming from, for example, the social structure and class interests. It is thus a discourse that helps to maintain social hierarchies and to justify regimes of control of some over others. Reading or analysing criminological knowledge as ideology is a slight provocation. This is a matter of intellectual sensitivity. In some circles, the affiliation between ideology and academic scholarship, and even science, is a kind of truism;3 in others, which aspire to academic scholarship as an objective and value-​free method of knowing, such an assumption is even offensive. In general, I would submit that regimes of social control, if they are to succeed, must be based on some kind of ideology. This is true in general, and certainly with respect to some of the most prominent manifestations of social control: the organization of the criminal justice system and the knowledge on which it is based. Hence, this book argues that criminology is not only a systematic approach that often seeks to explain criminal behaviour using quantifiable methods, but is also a system of belief, an ideology. Scholars of criminology, like those of any discipline in the social sciences, are by definition immersed in and exemplars of their broad object of study: the social being (Ram, 2012: 10). Likewise, criminological research is a product of dynamics similar to those found in sociology, in which there is an embedded reciprocity between the social context and the sociological text (Ram, 2012: 10). Again, much like sociology, criminology is only semi-​independent, but is also directly linked to and shaped by social power (Ram, 2012: 10; also see Bourdieu, 2005). Indeed, for criminology this is even more true than for sociology, because criminological research is often dependent on how external institutions define crime. Yet unlike the case in sociology, where a reflexive tradition plays a more prominent role, this reflexive muscle is mostly inactive in criminology. Criminologists should take seriously the injunction to know thyself, and stretch their reflexive muscle. This means, in many respects, to embrace a historical perspective. Indeed, a historical perspective is crucial if we wish to understand how basic concepts and assumptions came to be –​itself fundamental to understanding our current ways of thinking. But the field of criminology, in this respect, falls short. As noted, relatively little has been written from a historical perspective on the intellectual development of criminology (Rafter, 2011: 143), particularly in the United States, which for almost a century now 3

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has been the epicentre of criminological research. Some even argue that mainstream US criminology has been anti-​historical (Kurti, 2021: 140). On the other hand, the question of ‘us’ and ‘the other’ in the field of criminology has already been discussed. Who do criminologists represent? And who do they study? In 1967, Howard S. Becker published his now classic article, ‘Whose side are we on?’,4 in which he argued that it is not a question of whether researchers take sides, but of whose side they take. Becker asserts that in dealing with social problems, researchers cannot stay neutral, whether they acknowledge it or not. This realization calls for self-​reflection with respect to the researchers’ social position, the structures in which they operate, and their ideology. Too often, given their professional training and institutional framework –​that is, without even considering their political ideology and class interests –​researchers will simply choose the status quo and operate to secure the hegemonic social order, which by and large represents the social elite (Kurti, 2021: 137). Unpacking even this ‘ideology in practice’ (namely, research practices that serve the apparatus of the existing social order) demands a deep examination of the ideology that is at the foundation of the social order it serves. All of this makes a strong case for re-​examining the history of knowledge development in Western criminology, seeking to uncover its ideological roots and, to a lesser extent, its impact. More specifically, it sets the ground for a rereading of such knowledge as ideology, both in terms of searching for a priori assumptions that antecede knowledge creation, and in terms of the effect such knowledge might have in reproducing and legitimizing control (and specifically, control over the problematic and dangerous other). This book thus aims to introduce a systematic historical review and analysis of Western criminological knowledge by reading it (also) as ideology. It offers a theory of knowledge production based on the concept of otherness. As such, it is a reflexive history with a point: not to categorically refute criminology as an illegitimate body of knowledge, but to better situate it along the nexus of knowledge and power. That is, my objective is not to produce a polemic or to write an indictment of criminology and the scholars and researchers who, without evidence to the contrary, I must assume operate from an intention to produce valid knowledge and inform policy. In this regard, the book only engages with texts; it does not presume to analyse the authors of these texts beyond what comes out of the knowledge they 4

INTRODUCTION

produce. Still, the book does take a critical perspective in questioning the ideological foundations of this academic field. All in all, while the book employs a critical gaze, it does so in the tradition, as Anthony Giddens once commented, that ‘much of the best analysis is born of polemic’ (Giddens, 1975: viiii). The book follows the history of knowledge production in Western criminology as it evolved and developed in the face of both external pressures and inner paradigm shifts and struggles. As noted, the analysed corpus of the book is made up of criminological texts. In this respect, the initial challenge of this book was how to navigate the massive body of work that has been produced since the birth of criminology as a modern school of thought. Obviously, no one book can encompass all of the work ever written in the field. The decisions arrived at were necessarily an outcome of compromise. The book focuses on canonical texts, those that one will find in almost any textbook of criminology.5 But even in this respect the corpus examined here is limited. In following mainstream textbooks, I also consciously inherit the geographic confines of the origins of the texts –​that is, Europe and the United States. As the focal point of knowledge production in the field moves (around the second decade of the twentieth century) from the former to the latter, so too does the focus of this book. Note, too, that though the body of work analysed was not necessarily all written in English, it is all available in that language. As noted above, I focus my analysis, roughly divided, on three major paradigms of criminological knowledge: the classical school; the positivist school (focusing on aetiology); and what I term the managerial movement, which has given precedence to relevance and optimization of policy. The book, in this respect, also follows earlier chronological and analytical maps in the fields of criminology, penology, sociology of deviance, criminal justice studies, and victimology (for example, Taylor et al, 1973; Downes et al, 2016). This division also corresponds with that employed in the recent essay mentioned above, ‘New directions in the history of criminology’ (Wetzell, 2017).6 All in all, readers of this work should not expect a complete history of Western criminological knowledge. Yet any omissions should not detract from the general objective of the book, namely a historical analysis of the essential core of this field. In this regard, I aim to show that criminological knowledge, in its multiple incarnations, has been more than just a systematic approach to the task of perfecting criminal jurisprudence, explaining criminal behaviour by a quantifiable 5

A SCIENCE OF OTHERNESS?

method, and advising on interventions and punishment. Rather, I show that criminology is built around a certain way of looking at the world –​that is, an ideology.

Knowledge production in Western criminology: a short review As noted, this book covers three dominant paradigms in criminological knowledge: the classical, positivist, and managerial. By way of highlighting an alternative school of thought and using it as a critical reference point, the book also discusses the sociology of deviance, and particularly social constructionist theory. The classical school of thought in criminology was a product of the Enlightenment –​the Age of Reason. It developed and introduced social reforms in criminal jurisprudence and penology. At a moment before the long struggle for more democratization and for republican regimes, and before the Industrial Revolution (at least, before it was at full-​blown scale), the founding fathers of the classical school sought to break from the then-​predominant system of arbitrary law and cruel forms of punishment. Their systematic thought addressed a new type of person: the rational self, enlightened and free-​willed. They organized their penal reform around this ideal type of personhood. As such, laws, to be just, had to be based on a shared agreement (social contract), and had to apply fairly and equally to all citizens –​prerequisites which still serve as the foundation of modern legal systems. These principles, along with a utilitarian philosophy, also underpinned the reform of criminal punishment articulated by the classical school. Specifically, to the extent that people were party to the social contract and in control of their own actions, they were also responsible and liable for their crimes. As such, it was just for the state to punish them. But punishment, according to the classical school, should be reasonable and measured along utilitarian principles. The pain inflicted on the offender should not be cruel and excessive, but should fit the crime. Around a century later, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, a new school of criminological thought became dominant: scientific positivism. The positivist school challenged the classical school’s conception of human beings as rational and free-​willed. Instead of the episteme of the rational self, positivist criminology put forward the episteme of the pathological self, which presumes that human behaviour is determined by internal and external forces. These forces 6

INTRODUCTION

could cause some type of flaw (pathology), whose origins could be biological, physiological, psychological, or social. This competing episteme challenged the classical school’s emphasis on jurisprudence. The positivist school aimed to study crime not as a legal concept, as professed by the classical school, but as an outcome of delinquent behaviour, which itself results from some set of personal or social factors –​some biological deformation, innate physiological problem, personality disorder, or distressing social circumstances. As Enrico Ferri, one of the founding fathers of the positivist school, put it, ‘We must first understand the criminal who offends, before we can study and understand his crime’ (2004 [1901]: 6). Accordingly, positivist research is generally an etiological study that seeks to produce knowledge about the offender. Toward this end, the positivist school promulgated ‘a system of assessment, classification and differentiation’ to be carried out by ‘trained “diagnostic” personnel’ (Garland, 1985b: 126; italics in original). Moreover, the pathological self assumes not only that human behaviour is animated by causal factors, but also that these factors are beyond our control, and at times even beyond our awareness (Mehozay and Fisher, 2019). This conception undermines, if not totally uproots, the idea that criminal acts are the outcome of choice, freedom, and rational calculation. As such, the founding fathers of positivist criminology questioned the effectiveness of a punitive system of rewards and deterrence. Indeed, their conception casts doubt on whether penalties can have any effect at all: if offenders’ behaviour is a product of their pathology, how can it be corrected by punitive sanctions (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990: 13)? Therefore, unlike the classical school’s ‘economic model’ of deterrence, the penological policy of the positivist school opted for non-​penal forms of prevention and reform (along with ideas of population management, some of which were draconian, particularly in the school’s early days) (Garland 1985b: 127). The earliest form of positivism, dominant at the end of the nineteenth century, was the medical–​biological model, which focused on diagnosis and treatment. Later, this biological model gave way to a more open mapping of delinquency, based on multiple factors, and to an examination of the relationship between delinquency, personality, heredity, and the environment. From the 1930s onward, under the influence of the Chicago School, increasingly more weight was given to external social variables, to the point where positivist criminology 7

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was dominated by sociological approaches. Throughout this time, overall, the positivist school had a high impact on the production of criminological knowledge and a more moderate impact on shaping law enforcement and penal policies. The positivist school and the idea of the pathological self nevertheless helped shape criminal procedures and penal policies, particularly in the development of programmes for offender rehabilitation. As Garland describes it (1985a: 19), in the relatively short period between 1895 and 1914 the penal system in the United Kingdom doubled its number of available sanctions, which from that point until the 1970s included detention in special institutions for those diagnosed as mentally defective; detention in an inebriate reformatory for those found to be habitual drunkards; and ‘Borstal training’7 for troubled and delinquent youths, based on physical exercise, moral instruction, and vocational training. During this period, there was a move from a calibrated, hierarchical structure (of fines, prison terms, death), into which offenders were inserted according to the severity of the offense, to an extended grid of non-​equivalent and diverse dispositions, into which the offender is inscribed according to the diagnosis of his or her condition and the treatment appropriate to it. (Garland, 1985a: 28; italics in original) The influence of the positivist school on the penal system reached its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, with what Garland terms penal welfarism, a cluster of programmes that drew on the philosophy of the welfare state and that were attentive to the varied rights and needs of the offender, such as indeterminate sentences, parole supervision, and the use of social inquiry and psychiatric reports (Garland, 2001: 34). Yet since the 1970s, crime control, particularly in the United States, has shifted dramatically. Within the criminal justice system, a focus on reducing crime through the rehabilitation of lawbreakers gave way to harsher retributive policies. This transition was motivated by growing dissatisfaction with what was perceived as the purposeless fixation of the positivist–​etiological school on explaining crime, and a concomitant shift in criminological knowledge production, from seeking to explain crime to seeking, through applied knowledge, to manage it. Initially, this sentiment led to re-​embracing the rational self of the classical school. New theories, which came to be known as neoclassical, reinstated the core principles of the classical perspective, 8

INTRODUCTION

and returned to conceiving delinquency in terms of choice and moral responsibility. These theories included routine activity theory, crime as opportunity, situational crime prevention, and rational choice theory (Garland, 2001: 127). At the same time, other theories were based on economic models and, as such, on economic positivism (Gottfredson and Hirshi, 1990: 72). Thus, positivist criminology continued to play a role, albeit in different capacities, in shaping both the production of criminological knowledge and the criminal justice system. Like neoclassical theories, it did so under the most dominant development in the field of criminology since the 1970s: the managerial movement and administrative criminology. The managerial movement in criminology has its origins in the late 1960s, at a time when the intellectual and methodological influence of new fields such as systems theory and operations research were moving from business administration to the military and then to domestic public policy (Feeley and Simon, 1992: 454). As noted, the movement rejected the positivist–​etiological school’s insistence on explaining crime. According to advocates of the managerial movement, because crime is a given, it does not need to be explained but only managed; the role of criminological knowledge is administrative and should address the effects of crime rather than its causes (Garland, 2001: 140). Thus, as the movement became more dominant in criminology, the previous concern with root causes, social problems, and individual needs was replaced by a growing focus on costs, pricing, penal consequences, and effective disincentives (Garland, 2001: 130). With the costs of criminal justice procedures and institutions becoming an explicit feature of policy debate (Garland, 2001: 115), the orientation of knowledge production shifted to meeting specific quantifiable objectives in the form of pragmatic evidence-​b ased research (‘what works?’).

Analytical framework Ideology as starting point and driving force This book rereads and analyses the non-​linear intellectual history of Western criminology as a continued quest for knowledge that can undergird social organization and control. I follow this history of criminological knowledge production from its early days and as it developed and struggled to maintain its status. As Mariana Valverde suggests, we can gain a more accurate picture of the intellectual 9

A SCIENCE OF OTHERNESS?

development of criminological knowledge by ‘decentering crime’ (2017a: 326). This book does exactly that. It does not review the history of knowledge production in criminology as part of a direct quest to find the causes of crime and criminality. Instead, it offers an alternative interpretation in which the intellectual development of the field is also driven by an ideology: an ideology of otherness. Taking ideology seriously is particularly important when considering applied knowledge, which is the aim –​at least to a large extent –​of criminology. As we know, the classical school in criminology played a crucial role in shaping Western penal jurisprudence. But the inclination to affect and shape policy did not end with the classical school. The positivist school, too, in seeking to uncover the causes of crime, was motivated to a large extent by the desire to inform effective policy (Wetzell, 2017: 366). In a sense, the idea of ‘science for life’s sake’, as Ferri wrote (2004 [1901]: 35), can serve as the mission statement for criminology as a field. The managerial movement of the last few decades only deepened this commitment to helping create a better society by producing knowledge relevant for social organization and control. Indeed, being relevant in producing knowledge has been the raison d’être for so many criminologists over the years. To date, the field of criminology follows this calling. Of course, those who see criminology as a research-​based field, operating from the positivist assumption that there is strict separation between the realm of objective facts and the sphere of subjective values, will surely reject interpreting criminological knowledge as ideology. Yet, for one thing, it is highly questionable whether we can limit ourselves to the narrow confines of the empirical world, which is more often than not perceived as without sense or purpose (Schrödinger, 1958: 138). Thus, when speaking of applied knowledge, it seems impossible that forms of beliefs and ideas (that is, ideology) do not play a role. That is, even if we accept, in principle, the ontological separation between pure science and ideology, it is clear that in the case of applied knowledge these two domains commingle. From a practical perspective, in searching for ways to help improve human lives, those entrusted with producing applied criminological knowledge must step outside the boundaries of empirical discovery, and into the realm of normative extrapolations and justifications for modes of social control. I refer to the moment when an ‘intelligible object of knowledge’ takes ‘a propositional form’ (Constable, 1994: 561), meaning the moment at which this knowledge becomes a will to power. This is the moment when objective phenomena become 10

INTRODUCTION

actionable, either as things to study or things to apply through policy –​ in our case, regimes of social control. It is broadly accepted that in this process, knowledge also embodies the wills of a multitude of individuals in a common system of ideas, or simply, an ideology. Following John Milbank (2008 [1990]), this book subverts the concept of methodological atheism (Berger, 1967), challenging the notion that knowledge can be wholly autonomous or wholly detached from ideology. I aim to show how ideology (specifically, the ideology of otherness) is woven into and embedded in criminological knowledge. In addressing criminological knowledge production as ideology, I submit it to a similar reading to that employed by Boltanski and Chiapello with the management literature. This rereading, as they state, ‘aims at an initial location of the authors’ concerns, and the solutions they proposed to the problems of their period’ (2005: 60–6​ 1). In doing so, I seek to shed light on the hidden foundational layer of conceptions and assumptions in criminological knowledge. Criminological knowledge also serves as an important source of legitimacy for regimes of social control. And this process of legitimation, as we know, works best when such knowledge is internalized as ideology. Indeed, as Max Weber argued, political domination, which includes the penal and carceral systems, can seldom be exercised solely through naked physical force. For Weber, legitimate domination means that obedience does not rest on fear of violence, on self-​interest, or on utilitarian considerations (1968: 212). Rather, it depends on acceptance of its normative validity (Weber, 1968: 946) –​that is, on belief in the system’s lawfulness and right to exist, and on ‘a set of cultural and ideational meanings that condition the axiological content of this belief ’ (Kalyvas, 2008: 35). Weber also tells us that we cannot derive value judgements or binding norms solely from empirical science (1949: 52). Producing value judgements involves conscience, a willing human agency, and action (Weber, 1949: 54). Elsewhere, Weber points out that most rational systems have some irrational kernel –​that is, ideology (Ricœur, 1986: 207). Émile Durkheim echoes this argument with his famous phrase, ‘not everything in the contract is contractual’ (1964: 211). That is, a contract rests not just on regulation, but on a shared belief in the system and the justification of these regulations. All of this is to say that a thing, whether a paradigm or system or anything else, cannot justify itself. It must be based on some external or anterior source of values and ideals, independent of the thing itself. 11

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The production of criminological knowledge and its role in informing and even shaping penal and carceral systems is no exception. This book thus seeks to illuminate at least one such external or anterior source of values and ideals, one which informs and even moulds criminological knowledge: otherness. In this respect, the book joins works such as Khalil Gibran Muhammad’s The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (2010). In that book, Muhammad argues that crime statistics have served as artefacts or traces of ideology (as well as of social conflict); a way of communicating the inferiority and pathologies of the black urban community. Thus, as he illustrates, crime statistics served as a ‘technology of social difference’, or, putting it differently, as an ideological tool for constructing an other. The current book expands this argument and traces the ideology of otherness in the core of Western and US criminological knowledge and thought. The ideology of otherness What is otherness? Some political thinkers argue that otherness, upon the different ways they define it, is conceptually necessary. For example, Carl Schmitt builds his notion of the political on the idea of otherness. The political, for him, is based on the dichotomy between enemy and friend. The enemy is thus an ontologically needed other; it defines the ‘us’, the friend. The ‘other’ thus serves a function in a Durkheimian sense, or actually a double function: it is not only something external and threatening, but it is also what unites us, as separate from the other. In a related fashion, Stuart Hall articulates this dynamic through what he terms ‘the spectacle of the “Other” ’; that is, through the fascination about ‘otherness’, ‘other cultures’ are given meaning (Hall, 1997: 226), and in return, they give ‘us’ meaning as well. It is for this reason, he argues, that ‘difference’ is such a compelling theme (1997). Yet the creation of an ‘other’ is never neutral. It consists of applying some principle or characteristic that, in separating us from the other, establishes a hierarchy, thus making us superior to the other (Staszak, 2008: 2). Throughout history, it is almost safe to say, all societies that could use the concept of otherness to claim superiority over others, did so. This is, as Jean-​François Staszak writes, an anthropological constant (2008: 3). In the past, different languages and cultural systems were indicators and creators of otherness –​for example, for the ancient 12

INTRODUCTION

Greeks, barbarians were those who did not speak their language; for the monotheistic religions, the other was established as the non-​ believer, those who do not embrace God. In modernity, the other continued to be a needed construct, but through a new sensibility around difference, which demanded new knowledge. Criminological knowledge, I argue, served in part to fill this need, at least to an extent. The criminal other is depicted as someone who is dissimilar, and often defective and dangerous, perhaps even monstrous, so that he (or she) needs to be studied and, where possible, treated (Christie, 1986: 43). In this case, too, the other fulfils the function of defining the normative, decent ‘us’. In modernity, the mechanism through which social groups impose meaning by organizing things into classificatory systems, as the French anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss explained, has come to be based on scientific reasoning (Douglas, 1966; Hall, 1997: 236). Thus, the concept of ‘difference’, always fundamental for creating cultural meaning (for example, white/​black, day/​night, masculine/​feminine, native/​alien; Hall, 1997: 236), received a (then) new epistemological and ontological foundation (Said, 2000: 12). Moreover, there is something about modernity which is deeply committed to the process of sorting and categorization. It ties difference to the establishment of binary oppositions, based on a notion of ‘pure’ types and the creation of symbolic boundaries (Hall, 1997: 236), all grounded in ‘scientific’ –​ meaning rational and objective –​reasoning (Agozino, 2003: 21). The Enlightenment and the scientific revolution thus brought an enduring racial taxonomy. Difference was no longer based on metaphysical and theological schemas, at least not in their original form; instead, modernity introduced new ways to establish a ‘more logical description and classification that ordered humankind in terms of physiological and mental criteria based on observable “facts” and tested evidence’ (Bouie (2020), quoting the historian Ivan Hannaford, in Race: The History of an Idea in the West). On the other hand, however, the apparatus of control and representation based on otherness means that during the historical moment of modernity, which praised itself for embracing reason over metaphysics and ignorance, the presumption of rationality was denied to a large portion of the population (for example, the poor, women, and the colonized). It was assumed that they were driven by nature, emotions, and instinct rather than by reason (Agozino, 2003: 21). But just as this meant they could be dominated as inferior, it also meant 13

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that someone had to take responsibility for them, thus also demanding a paternal approach of care and intervention. Several scholars have followed Garland in using the ‘criminology of the other’ to define or reference positivist criminology (for example, Hallsworth, 2000; Agozino, 2000; Greer and Jewkes, 2005). In this book I aim to expand on this concept, first by systematically rereading the history of Western positivist criminological knowledge, and second, by considering the relationship of alternative (and often contradictory) bodies of knowledge, such as the classical school, to the framework of otherness. I ask in what ways, if at all, can the conception of otherness and the process of othering also inform our understanding of the classical school and the management movement in criminological knowledge production. In short, is otherness, in some capacity, a conceptual unifier, and if so, what can we learn from it about the field in general? Garland, if we remember, actually juxtaposed positivist criminology, as the criminology of the other, with the criminology of the self of the classical school, in which the inclination to offend is in each and every one of us –​something which is shared by all (1999: 354). I accept and value this juxtaposition, but following Piers Beirne (1993), my reading is more nuanced and, as I discuss in the next chapter, I do see kernels of otherness in classical thought as well. I do not, however, argue that all forms of criminological knowledge reflect the same commitment to this concept. My objective is to unpack the intellectual history of Western criminology as a whole by considering the impact of otherness on shaping its ideological foundations. The conceptual centrality of otherness is most prominent in regard to the early days of positivist criminology. Here we must credit the work of Nicole Rafter (2004, 2005) and others (Aliverti et al, 2021) who demonstrated the debt that early positivist criminology holds to physiognomy, phrenology, and eugenics. Within these schools of thought, the concept of otherness played a pivotal role. Yet one can argue that even today, at least in the public consciousness, the notion of the offender as a frightening other, even in a mystical sense, continues to loom. For example, consider the case of Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014. In testifying before a grand jury after the incident, Wilson used the phrase ‘It looks like a demon’ to describe why he was afraid of Brown during the struggle between them (Kotsko, 2016: 1). In using this phrase Wilson not only invoked a dramatic image of otherness, but went further, depicting his black 14

INTRODUCTION

victim as an ‘it’. The question remains, however, to what degree this sort of feeling informs contemporary criminological knowledge. As Garland has written, ‘One might say that we are developing an official criminology that fits our social and cultural configuration’ (1996: 461–​462). This is, of course, not unique to criminology. For knowledge to be accepted, it must tap into shared ideas and understandings. As the journalist Hua Hsu put it in a profile of Stuart Hall, ‘In a free society, culture does not answer to central, governmental dictates, but it nonetheless embodies an unconscious sense of the values we share, of what it means to be right or wrong’.8 In creating knowledge we cannot escape this realization, even if we are committed to the highest professional and scientific standards. As I wrote earlier, my intention is not to condemn criminological research, but to raise awareness of the importance of reflexive and historical analysis of its knowledge production. Otherness, I argue, is an important conceptual tool for interpretation and analysis as we examine both the ideological foundations and the impact of criminological knowledge. Following Hall (1980; 1997), I am particularly interested in the moment of encoding; that is, the process by which social context, common beliefs (doxa), a shared imaginary repository, cultural sensibilities, relations of production, and political interests shape frameworks of knowledge: conceptions, assumptions, and thought processes that appear isolated, natural, and, as such, objective and valid. In short, encoding is a process whereby an ideological foundation becomes part of a domain of true knowledge (an episteme). Unpacking the process of encoding helps us illustrate how what is often taken as objective, valid knowledge is also based on shared a priori subjective (though collective) structures of understanding. What is encoded, in other words, is existing shared notions, or simply, ideology. Such a process, hidden by the professionalism and the symbolic capital of researchers, helps to both neutralize ideological bias and reproduce dominant perceptions, which may then inform and shape policy. In what way is an ideology of otherness useful for criminological knowledge, and, as such, for regimes of social control? To put it most simply, otherness reproduces, justifies, and legitimizes social hierarchy. Otherness serves to produce, for those in positions of dominance, a ‘theodicy of their privileges’, as Max Weber put it, meaning justification for a social order in which one group rules over another.9 Otherness informs a new modern sensibility for justifying rigid social 15

A SCIENCE OF OTHERNESS?

stratification in an era when all men are supposed to be created equal, and when legitimacy is conferred on policies backed by scientific competence. The notion of otherness, often supported by a scientific discourse and empirical methodology, placed the blame for inequality on independent variables (individual pathologies) or variables that do not directly depend on the position of those at the top of the social ladder. Thus, for example, otherness in early modernity worked through scientific racism, turning biological and physical differences into relations of domination (Bouie, 2020). Pierre Bourdieu argued, in this respect, that racism disguises itself as scientific knowledge (he gives the examples of genetics or ecology) to legitimize the rule of some over others (1980). Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality (2007) further explains the need for knowledge of otherness. Governmentality, which combines the terms government and rationality, is the apparatus for controlling and regulating populations. This apparatus emerged as an answer to the modern shift of economic life from the household to the state, which demanded that the state administer (in other words, shape or guide) the conduct of its people. This objective demanded the ability to manage populations by collecting information, which in turn led to the emergence of ‘political arithmetic’ and statistics (Garland, 1997: 176). Yet the key point is that governmentality was an apparatus for controlling and managing the population while maintaining and reproducing the social structure. Thus, early on, the primary challenge for administration was how to control those who, in the interest of class preservation, were considered the ‘dangerous classes’ –​the dangerous others. Thus, governmentality was both a means toward positive management of life (programmes to support the wealth, prosperity, and health of the population) and, at the same time and even more so, a framework of control and exclusion (for example, the carceral state). All in all, such control, in modern times, demanded new knowledge that studied the other as a problem –​for example, poverty knowledge (O’Connor, 2001) and miserology (Valverde, 2017a). Although not many have made this connection,10 it seems certain that the otherness applied to the lower classes in Europe and the United States –​that is, the urban poor –​was influenced by the ultimate other: the colonial other and the enslaved other. Otherness, with its crude foundation in racism, explained, and more so, justified, the fundamental contradiction between the Enlightenment project and both colonialism and the institution of slavery. Otherness, in 16

INTRODUCTION

other words, was a legitimizing bridge for this dichotomy between the Enlightenment ideals of liberty and equality and the practices of colonization and slavery. This was a most necessary bridge. As Jamelle Bouie powerfully writes, ‘Colonial domination and expropriation marched hand in hand with the spread of “liberty,” and liberalism arose alongside our modern notions of race and racism’ (2020: 2). Knowledge based on notions of biological inferiority or other pathologies informed degeneration theories and justified brutish political projects. As I shall demonstrate in the following chapters (particularly in Chapter 3), we find similarities in the way the colonial others and the ‘dangerous classes’ of the metropole were perceived, depicted, and even managed. Like the excluded colonial others, whom the conquerors never even governed under the same legal system, let alone sought to integrate, so too the ruling elite of the metropole chose to exclude those whom they considered social and economic parasites. For them, those paupers were ‘of society, but not in it’ (Greer and Jewkes, 2005: 21). Interestingly, this phenomenon is not limited to the traditional colonial powers. In his book Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience (2013), Alexander Etkind makes the case that for centuries the relationship between the ruling elites and the masses in imperial Russia resembled how colonial empires such as Britain or France treated people in their overseas possessions. Following Said, he writes, too, about a kind of internal ‘orientalism’ adopted by the Russian aristocracy toward the peasants. All told, the inferior and racialized colonial other was understood as a creature ruled by nature, as opposed to the cultured European. This idea was then attached to the metropole: it was only Europeans of the middle and upper classes who developed ‘Culture’ to subdue and overcome ‘Nature’ (Hall, 1997: 244). The barbarian savage of the colony and the urban poor of the metropole were both considered physiologically and anatomically degenerate, needing to be controlled through similar means of exclusion, encountered only in external, racially polluted contact zones (Hall, 1997: 241). It should be remembered here that this otherness was in some ways ambivalent, both positive and negative: the other was barbaric, but also exotic (Hall, 1997: 240). The black man might be seen as legitimately enslaved, but alluring in his ‘authenticity’ and muscularity. The white working class, too, might be attractive in their masculinity or sense of freedom, though the allure of the exotic was stronger for the distant, far-​off other 17

A SCIENCE OF OTHERNESS?

than for the white lower classes. Yet, regardless, even these ‘authentic’ positive characteristics are part of the construction of otherness that serves as an instrument for external representation and control. External representation and control demanded new objects of knowledge (Hall, 1997: 261). Much like the establishment of the oriental other, as Said describes (1979: 124), so too the degenerate other, the delinquent other, or, simply, the dangerous other was created via specialized knowledge that legitimized authority for and over the other. Authority for the other meant authority to modernize and acculturate the other (the ‘White Man’s Burden’). Authority over the other meant authority to exclude, remove, and even eliminate the other. The specialized knowledge which underpinned both forms of authority was created by professionals and based on ‘typing’: dividing individuals into groups with specific characteristics and roles –​for example, the deserving and the undeserving poor (Hall, 1997: 257). With respect to positivist criminology, we do not have someone who might have committed a crime. Instead, we have a criminal, a specific type of person: an other. This book follows types of otherness in criminological knowledge, which, in a non-​linear fashion, transition from crude to subtle and nuanced forms. In this respect, the book introduces an interpretive analysis, asking in what ways Western criminological knowledge has supported modern forms of social control. As we shall see, I argue that through most of its history, criminological knowledge both begins from a position of otherness and takes otherness as its conclusion.

Outline of chapters As noted, this book reviews major criminological texts produced over a period spanning more than two centuries, beginning in the second half of the eighteenth century. I follow this intellectual history more or less in chronological order. Analytically, particularly with respect to the next three chapters, my subdivision more or less follows the four main paradigms presented in Richard Wetzell’s recent edited volume (2017): crime as a result of a moral failing; of a criminogenic biological defect; of a mixture of biological and environmental factors; and of purely environmental factors (Wetzell, 2017: 365). However, since I cover a wider historical period, I also focus on subculture theories, constructionist theories, and control and administrative criminology (the managerial movement). 18

INTRODUCTION

Our journey begins with the classical school. Chapter 2 follows the work of Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham, reviewing their contribution to criminal jurisprudence and penology. The chapter examines the classical school’s position vis-​à-​vis the positivist school through the prisms of Homo criminalis (‘criminal man’) and scientism. Overall, the chapter rethinks the classical school’s contribution to otherness and bourgeois ideology. Chapters 3 to 5 trace the intellectual history of Western positivist criminology. Chapter 3 analyses the early stages of positivist criminology, the ‘age of degeneration’ (Valverde, 2017a: 336). The chapter examines how moral statisticians, phrenologists, and criminal anthropologists operated from a position of otherness, incorporating, developing, and reproducing this paradigm. Chapter 4 moves on to the neo-​Lombrosian era and the establishment of the Chicago School. It follows the transition from a multifactorial aetiology of delinquency to social ecology and social theories in general. It examines the development of criminological knowledge in this period with respect to otherness, pointing to two versions –​one which continues to carry the conception of degeneration to a point where this knowledge even supports eugenic policies; and the other, based on softer determinism, which calls for paternalistic programmes to modernize and acculturate troubled populations. I term the latter modernization theories. Chapter 5 covers the era of the grand theories, roughly from the late 1930s to the mid-​or late 1960s. Under the rubric of subculture, which integrates both Sutherland’s differential association theory and Robert Morton’s strain theory, it reviews the emergence and dominance of the grand sociological theories, aiming to make sense of how they influenced the evolution of otherness. The chapter also reviews constructionist theories from the 1960s, which emerged from the sociology of deviance. Chapter 6 reviews the intellectual history of criminology from the 1970s to contemporary times. It examines how knowledge production in criminology reacted and evolved under the managerial movement. It explores how this (then) new paradigm combined the classical and positivist approaches under what Garland termed the ‘Culture of Control’ (2001), and how under the fixation of applied knowledge, and through a neopositivist framework, a different kind of otherness –​ otherness in practice –​was introduced. In Chapter 7, the concluding chapter, I ponder the role of criminological knowledge in supporting, maintaining, and even promoting otherness. I relate this discussion to 19

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some general thoughts about the role of mainstream, and most often liberal, criminology, specifically its alliance with state apparatuses and its acceptance of the existing social structure, even if unconsciously. Finally, I consider how criminology can benefit from additional sources of knowledge, such as that produced by social movements, activism, and non-​professional grassroots actors.

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2

The Classical School: Otherness as an Ideology of an Imaginary Bourgeois Society The founding fathers of the classical school in criminology never saw themselves as contributing to a new discipline, or even to a distinct field of research.1 For them, their work on criminal jurisprudence and penal reform always took place in a much grander context: producing a body of work to support profound institutional reform, with the ultimate end of helping engineer a good modern state. Indeed, the classical school has had a lasting influence on criminal law and penal practices. Yet no one can deny its paramount contribution to criminological thought. It is one of the pillars of the discipline of criminology, and guaranteed to appear in any textbook or introductory course on the subject. Moreover, its ideas remain influential, particularly its philosophy of crime, which served as the foundation of the neoclassical school that emerged in the late 1960s, and which continues to inform contemporary criminological theories such as situational crime prevention. A great deal has been written on the classical school, and I shall not attempt to cover this literature in its entirety. This chapter aims, rather, to locate the role of the classical school in the history of knowledge production within the multifaceted field of criminology. First, I wish to rethink its position vis-​à-​vis the positivist school. Was the transition from the classical school to the positivist school a paradigm shift? Or can we also recognize some shared conceptions and, as such, some continuity between them? Mainly, however, I wish to inquire into the classical school’s ideological core, whether manifest or hidden. I consider in what ways this school serves an ideology of 21

A SCIENCE OF OTHERNESS?

social control. What type of social regime does it support? How do its cultural and philosophical notions inform this type of criminological understanding? What was the socio-​political and socio-​economic context in which such penal knowledge was produced? And if this knowledge indeed helped shape a regime of social control, who did this change benefit? In this respect, the chapter traces the ways in which the classical school builds a narrative of responsibilization, classical responsibilization if you will, which places responsibility for crime on individuals and not on social conditions, and on this basis justifies state violence in a penal guise. This chapter also reflects on the gaps between universal and inclusive ideals, and the reality of the rigid social hierarchy in which the work of the classical school took place. How can we reconcile the classical school’s liberal foundation, particularly the principle of equality before the law, with the fact that its principles undergird a highly stratified social regime? With the philosophical notion of the social contract as its intellectual foundation, can the doctrines of the classical school be truly universal? And how does the classical school engage with those most heavily targeted by and enmeshed in the penal system –​ that is, those who are often related to as the dangerous others? In this respect, is the classical school an all-​encompassing criminology of the self (Garland, 1999: 354), or –​despite its de-​emphasis of the offender and its assertion that all people have the capacity to offend –​does the classical school too have a version of the criminal other?

Background It was the positivist school of criminology which, in retrospect, assigned the name ‘classical school’ to that body of criminological work produced in the last third of the eighteenth century and the first three decades of the nineteenth century (Rafter, 2004: 980).2 The positivist thinkers were a group of criminal anthropologists working late in the nineteenth century, who themselves were hoping to be regarded as a ‘school’, and who therefore claimed the existence of a previous school, which they dubbed the classical. Arguably, in doing so, they not only loaned more gravitas to the field they were attempting to establish, but created an intellectual ‘other’ against which to advance their own work. Or perhaps the early positivist criminologists simply could not ignore the profound impact of the classical scholars on criminal jurisprudence and on modern penal practices. Indeed, the 22

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ideas of the classical school won the approval of the educated classes early on (Beirne, 1993: 13), and led to a sweep of legal reforms, particularly in Western European states. The first notable application, in this respect, was in the French Penal Code of 1791, ratified by the National Assembly during the revolution. Born out of the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the classical school of criminology offered a naturalistic explanation for crime –​ one which broke from the concepts of sin and demonology (Jenkins, 1984: 112). The founding fathers of the classical school3 also sought to replace the old system of sovereign privilege and harsh arbitrary administration of the law with a procedurally just system of social control. They envisioned a social order based on rational principles like stability, predictability, and accountability, derived from logical reasoning and free from subjectivity and emotion –​principles that would both establish and serve the best possible society. Toward this end they introduced a set of axiomatic legal principles, including the doctrines of nullum crimen sine lege (no crime without law), presumption of innocence, equality before the law, due process, and more. The cornerstone of this social order was the notion of a political community comprised of autonomous rational individuals who freely enter into a social contract to secure communal peace and individual liberties. As such, this shared social contract justifies actions by the state to punish those who do not abide by its laws. Punishment, in this respect, is only inflicted on the free –​that is, members of a legal-​political community (as we shall see below, the ‘unfree’ are punished under a different form of control) (Melossi, 2022). Indeed, the underlying assumption that all members of society are free and willingly accepted the social contract means that the state has not only the right, but the duty to punish those who choose to violate it. Yet the classical school also holds that people are self-​interested and pleasure-​seeking creatures, and therefore always liable to contravene the social contract, however freely accepted. The founding members of the classical school of criminology developed their programmes for social reform by addressing a new type of person. That is, they embraced a new conception about the essence of what it means to be human, and devised their scholarship around this new understanding. This new conception was based on the naturalist and rationalist philosophy of the Enlightenment (Lanier et al, 2018: 61). At its root is the episteme of the rational self (Mehozay and Fisher, 2019: 527), which sees people as wilful agents with autonomous 23

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logical intentions. This conception of the self was founded on a new individualistic meaning of freedom as the ‘ability to master one’s own fate’ (see Bauman, 1988: 7; quoted in Seddon, 2009: 19), which emerged around the second half of the eighteenth century and became more dominant with the consolidation of industrial capitalism (Seddon, 2009: 19). A free and therefore just society was a society that allowed individuals to pursue their own interests. Accordingly, crime is taken as a rational act (in the instrumental and technical sense), and, as such, a conventional form of behaviour. Social control in such a society is manifested at the individual level; it demands personal self-​control (Seddon, 2009: 27), in what François Ewald defined as a ‘paradigm of responsibility’ (2002: 273; Seddon, 2009: 39). The classical scholars devised their ideas for penal programmes based on this conception. To summarize the logic: as rational beings, offenders are free-​willed persons, and thus they –​and not the social structure or social conditions –​are responsible for their actions, morally, financially, and legally (Seddon, 2009: 57). Thus, the episteme of the rational self establishes a narrative of individual responsibilization that shields the social structure from culpability and obligation. Above all, it cannot lead to any conclusion that calls for deep structural social reform. Equally, the episteme of the rational self defined the classical school’s conception of delinquency by its absence. In classical criminology, as David Garland put it, offenders are people ‘just like us’ (1996: 461). This ‘criminology of the self ’, as Garland points out (1996: 461), de-​ dramatizes crime, depicting it as an ordinary act, a reflection merely of people’s natural pursuit of pleasure and self-​interest –​so long as they think they will not be caught (Garland, 1999: 354). As the adage has it, if you want to identify a potential criminal, just find the closest mirror. By extension, if the inclination to offend is in all of us, then there is no need to search for the root causes of delinquency. The idea that delinquency is a special disposition, grounded in a pathology of the offender –​a criminology of the other (Garland, 1999: 354) –​is a later development that will come to define positivist criminology. In sum, the classical school did not seek to explain the aetiology of crime. Rather, it aimed to administer justice by addressing the offence, not the offender. Indeed, the classical school defined crime within the strict limits of criminal law (Jeffery, 1959: 4). Classicism in criminology can thus be defined as ‘administrative and legal criminology’ (Vold, 1979: 26; Jenkins, 1984: 122). Within the limits of the law and under the doctrine of the rational self, once a person 24

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is shown to have committed a criminal act, the offender bears full criminal responsibility. He is guilty in an absolute and non-​contingent way, and deserving of punishment which should be swiftly executed. Let us consider the classical school more deeply by looking at two of its founding fathers: Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham.

The intellectual foundations of the classical school: Beccaria and Bentham Cesare Beccaria: father of the classical school If any individual can be called the founder of the classical school, the figure who most deserves the title is Cesare Beccaria. He was born in Milan, the capital of Lombardy, a region in the north of today’s Italy. During his lifetime, this region was under Habsburg rule, and enjoyed a more liberal regime compared to the other regions of today’s Italy. Beccaria was one of the Italian illuministi (followers of the illuminismo, or Enlightenment), and was a member of the Società dei Pugni (‘Society of the Fists’), an avant-​garde cultural group founded by the Verri brothers (Pietro and Allesandro). Pietro Verri encouraged Beccaria to study and write about legal reform. This study became his best-​known book, Dei delitti e delle pene (On Crimes and Punishments). On Crimes and Punishments was first published in the summer of 1764 –​anonymously, due to Beccaria’s fear of backlash from the government and, even more so, from the ecclesiastical authorities. The Catholic Church indeed banned the book for desecrating religious values, placing it in its Index Librorum Prohibitorum, from where it was only removed in 1962 (Paternoster and Fisher, 2017: 175). Yet, by 1800, 23 editions had been published in Italy alone, with 14 more in French translation and 11 in English, three of them in the United States (Beirne, 1993: 13). By then, too, Beccaria was recognized as the author of the book. Famous philosophers of the French Enlightenment, particularly the French Encyclopaedists and most notably Voltaire, enthusiastically embraced On Crimes and Punishments. Perhaps surprisingly, so did leading political leaders and rulers, among them Gustavus III of Sweden, Catherine II of Russia, and Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, as well as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams (Beirne, 1993: 13). The Enlightenment bona fides of the last two are well known, but what about the first three? Some argue that Beccaria’s scholarship should in fact be defined as conservative, and thus appealing to absolutist 25

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rulers, who, to an extent, embraced bourgeois ideology (Jenkins, 1984: 114). Moreover, even prior to Beccaria’s treatise, these absolute rulers had already revealed a readiness to embrace reform (Newman and Marongiu, 1990: 340). Thus, many of the reforms that took place around the time of the book’s publication, or soon afterwards, need not be attributed to Beccaria’s influence, but can be considered measures taken in response to social and political conditions (Newman and Marongiu, 1990: 326). With regard to On Crimes and Punishments as a text of the Enlightenment, it has been said that ‘Beccaria wrote French with Italian words’ (Beirne, 1993: 23) –​something that explains why it found so much favour among French Enlightenment philosophers. Beccaria was able to put into writing the principles of the Enlightenment in a concise and even applicable way (Shaar, 2018: 9). In other words, the treatise was a work of synthesis and not the product of original thought (Jenkins, 1984: 120; Paternoster and Fisher, 2017: 174). What helped to make the book such a success was that it was the right text at the right moment, anticipating a wave of legal-​political reform that gradually swept through nearly the entire world, and had a major impact on defining the concept of Western justice (Paternoster and Fisher, 2017: 22). In many respects, it asserted the modern right to punish and, in effect, the right to govern (Paternoster and Fisher, 2017: 22). It is actually difficult to succinctly summarize On Crimes and Punishments, because the text contains many obscurities and contradictions (Newman and Marongiu, 1990: 330). It begins by laying the foundation for law and punishment in the idea of the social contract. It then proceeds with its two main topics: the causes of and response to crime. In discussing the causes of delinquent behaviour, Beccaria points to wilful activity in seeking pleasure at the expense of others. In doing so, he does not consider mitigating circumstances, whether individual pathology or social conditions. He does not embrace –​as do others, even among his contemporaries –​ the discourse of degeneration. With the idea of the social contract, Beccaria differentiates between social control of the free and of the unfree. Punishment, even imprisonment, is for the free, not the unfree. Dario Melossi (2022) argues in this respect that the end of servitude is the beginning of imprisonment. Yet the shadow of slavery is embodied in imprisonment. In the case of imprisonment, one is denied freedom for part of one’s life (as one is denied freedom for part of one’s day in the case of the 26

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factory). The temporality of imprisonment, in a sense, is what separates modern societies from ancient ones (Melossi, 2022). Beccaria himself makes this connection: ‘punishment shall be the only sort of slavery which can be called just, namely the temporary enslavement of the labor and person of the criminal to society, so that he may redress his unjust despotism against the social contract by a period of complete personal subjection’ (‘Theft’, On Crimes and Punishments).4 As the book progresses, Beccaria lays out the theoretical foundation for the idea of limiting sovereign power, and the importance of establishing a regulated system of punishment. Criminal jurisprudence is a necessary means to ensure social order and prevent a war of all against all. As such, punishment must be based on retribution but not revenge, while also deterring repetition of the harmful act. It is thus rooted in two principles: proportionality (the punishment must fit the crime) and purpose (deterrence). On both counts, for Beccaria, the certainty of punishment was more important than its severity.5 As he saw it, the causal link between the offence and the punishment had to be clear to both the offender and the public. Criminal law must be based on transparency. While, for the most part, Beccaria in On Crimes and Punishments does not consider the structure of society as a generator of crime, he does admit in the introduction that if we look at history, we will find that laws have typically served the desires of the few. This statement, however, should be read as part of the Enlightenment struggle against the aristocracy’s privilege-​based regime rather than as a sign of universal class awareness. Moreover, when Beccaria acknowledges (in the chapter on ‘Types of Crimes’) that even nobles and justices can commit serious offences, and when he asserts in his conclusion that all members of society are bound by the social contract, ‘from the palace to the slum and oblige the noble and the poor equally’, he is expressing universal liberal principles and not class consciousness. Furthermore, Beccaria’s universalism, inasmuch as he takes into account all people and applies to them the same standards –​a brave and pioneering move for his time –​is still, in the final analysis, not a full or true commitment. When Beccaria speaks of ‘any man’, he refers to what Marx would later, in his essay ‘On the Jewish Question’, criticize as an ‘imaginary member of an illusory sovereignty’, one who is ‘endowed with an unreal universality’. In other words, Beccaria rather conveniently ignores the social conditions that strongly limit his adherence to universalism. I shall return to this point later. 27

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There are several intellectual influences on Beccaria’s thought as manifested in On Crimes and Punishments. The first is early utilitarian philosophy, particularly Helvétian proto-​utilitarian thought, which advocated for a society based on individuals’ pursuit of their private wants and desires.6 The idea here is that the social order should aim to foster as much happiness or pleasure as possible for the majority of its members, while reducing unhappiness or harm. Beccaria’s work represents the transition from a Christian to a utilitarian ethos –​ from a shared acceptance of suffering as the natural state of man to a conception of life oriented around the pursuit of happiness (Newman and Marongiu, 1990: 326). Utilitarian thought, and its concern with happiness, guided Beccaria’s penal calculus, and his belief that punishment should be based on the minimum amount of pain needed to deter unwanted actions. Yet for Beccaria, only the legislature should be limited by utilitarian principles; the judiciary, by contrast, could be guided by a more retributive form of judgement (Shaar, 2018: 26). Indeed, in terms of how Beccaria saw the role of the courts, he was first a retributivist and only then a utilitarian (Newman and Marongiu, 1990: 334). It could be said that he integrated a retributive justification into a utilitarian model of punishment (Newman and Marongiu, 1990: 335). The second intellectual influence on Beccaria’s thought in On Crimes and Punishments is humanism. Humanism is generally defined as a doctrine which positions human beings at the centre of the universe, inasmuch as they are both the originator of any social dynamics and the end point for any social endeavour. Humanism, which dates back at least to the Renaissance, has been a cornerstone of secularization. On Crimes and Punishments is a humanist project (Beirne, 1993: 15), in that the treatise –​in opposition to the ecclesiastical authority which still dominated at the time –​divests crime of any metaphysical meaning. For Beccaria, there were two main humanistic objectives, both derived from French humanism: first, the rejection of punishments designed to inflict cruel and brutal physical pain; and second, the assertion of a secular conception of law. Further, he comes out against any form of arbitrary power, whether in making arrests without evidence, extorting confessions, or denying due process and rightful protections. Piers Beirne finds a third major intellectual influence on Beccaria in On Crimes and Punishments: the ‘science of man’ of the Scottish Enlightenment (Beirne, 1993). This is an interesting view, because it is commonly assumed that only with positivist criminology do we find 28

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a connection with or imitation of the natural sciences. Beirne argues that Beccaria’s penal calculus is based on three principles inspired by the Scottish Enlightenment’s science of man; first, the idea that punishment must be based upon a predictable body of law, which pushes him to reject any form of arbitrariness; second, his emphasis on the association between crime and punishment; and finally, his sensationalism, under which he denies the validity of a supreme being in legal and penal discourse (Beirne, 1993: 33–​40). Beirne further points to Beccaria’s embrace of legal analytical tools, which follow a mathematical approach to utilitarianism as articulated in the writings of, for example, Francis Hutcheson and David Hume (Beirne, 1993). Thus, we can trace in Beccaria’s writings early links to scientism. The connection to scientism is further displayed in Beccaria’s ‘psychology of mind’ (Paternoster and Fisher, 2017). We can even find, if not always directly, a connection to positivist thought. For instance, in explaining how to deter one’s despotic spirit, Beccaria uses the phrase ‘experience has shown’ (Beccaria, 2018: 7). Thus, he sees experience as an epistemological foundation for knowledge about human behaviour and motives. Moreover, his allusions to ‘representation to the mind’ and ‘impressions’ (Beccaria, 2018: 7) pay homage to empiricism and scientific thought. The founding father of the classical school in criminology does not take his cue from Descartes’ rationalism, but from David Hume. His theory of knowledge follows the empiricism of Hume and others (Paternoster and Fisher, 2017).7 Of course, positivism and empiricism are not the same. Yet while the former deals with the nature of knowledge, and the latter is concerned with the origin of knowledge, they are nonetheless related philosophical theories; and positivism, in many respects, is built on empiricism. Moreover, Beirne continues, we can also find in Beccaria’s writing a semblance of Homo criminalis (1993: 44–​45), which is certainly a positivist notion. According to Beirne (1993: 43–​45), On Crimes and Punishments lays out this preliminary notion of the offender as a distinct individual (an ‘other’). Indeed, we can recognize in Beccaria’s work a narrow concept of the criminal and not just of the crime. In this respect, Beccaria, albeit briefly, not only acknowledges the impact of social disparities on crime (Shaar, 2018: 24, 29), he even references a ‘dangerous class’. For him, criminals are people whose poor understanding of liberty leads them to act against the social contract (Beirne, 1993: 46). It appears that in the way Beccaria is articulating 29

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this, he is blind to class prejudice. One may argue, however, that this notion of a dangerous class in fact targets a specific population who were not party to the social contract in the first place. Jeremy Bentham: the utilitarian ideal Jeremy Bentham, the second most notable member of the classical school, also presents a complex picture vis-​à-​vis his connection and contribution to criminological scientific discourse. Despite the fact that Bentham’s contribution to the classical school in criminology is undeniable, he was no stranger to positivist thinking. As William Stark argued, ‘Bentham’s doctrine was in all its parts a synthesis of rationalism and empiricism, but a synthesis in which the latter was much the stronger element’ (1946: 587). Bentham, like Beccaria, never declared himself a ‘criminologist’. His work on penal reform was but one part of his numerous interests and activities, and his proposals were mostly ignored during his lifetime. Nonetheless, he gained attention, even international recognition, for his work on codification of the law and his critique of the prevailing judicial and parliamentary system (O’Malley, 2009: 4). His Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, first published in 1789, marks a milestone in Bentham’s contribution to the classical school of criminology (Paternoster and Fisher, 2017: 174). In it, he emphasizes the principle of utility and, like Beccaria, focuses on crime, not the criminal. Indeed, throughout his work, his concern was the criminal act, rather than the motivations of the offender (Jeffery, 1959: 4). For example, Bentham’s The Theory of Legislation references crime, offences, and even criminality, but not criminals or offenders (Geis, 1955: 161). Bentham was a leading member of the Philosophical Radicals –​a group of predominately utilitarian philosophers and reformers. They were considered radical for their time inasmuch as they denied the validity of the old aristocratic system of privileges (Bentham, in his Constitutional Code, specifically called upon the aristocracy to forgo power; Roberts, 1959: 193). But even more so, these thinkers were radical in that they introduced a transformative vision and understanding of society. For them, society was an aggregate of individuals. Therefore, society must be understood and studied from the vantage point of the individual, focusing especially on economic and political activity. The Philosophical Radicals aspired to imitate the 30

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natural sciences in finding some sort of Newtonian law that would underlie social dynamics. The result was a new moral theory. The underlying assumption of the Philosophical Radicals can be summed up as follows: all human beings share the same basic desire –​ to seek pleasure and avoid pain. In the sense that concern with their own pleasure and pain is what motivates all human actions, people are egoistic. But considered in aggregate these individual inclinations are harmonious, and work to the benefit of society as a whole. Crucially, for the Radicals, this utilitarian moral philosophy was more than just a theory. Rather, they sought to turn it into an operative social programme. In aiming to turn his scholarly prose into practice, Bentham in particular can be regarded as an eager social engineer (Stokes, 2001: 712). His efforts, in this respect, were manifested mainly in his work on jurisprudence. Bentham was a firm believer in ‘the power of the legislator over society’ (Stark, 1946: 586). And, in the case of criminal jurisprudence, his goal was total reform of the English criminal law, which he saw as ‘a horrendous morass of confusion, conflictions, gaps and barbarity’ (Volk, 1956: 697). In its place, Bentham hoped to establish a system of social control, which would manage human behaviour based on a general ethical principle: utilitarianism. Bentham’s penology derived from the same impulse toward social engineering. This, too, was based on his utilitarian philosophy and the pleasure–​pain equation (Geis, 1955: 165). Bentham believed that punishment should be used to prevent recidivism and to deter others from committing similar acts; as such, it should entail sufficient pain to outweigh any pleasure gained from the offence. Bentham’s emphasis on deterrence as the purpose of punishment meant that he was more true to utilitarian principles than Beccaria (Agozino, 2003: 17). Indeed, for Bentham, punishment was a practical solution for minimizing or even eliminating crime (Agozino, 2003: 162), and so its utilitarian value superseded all else. In the service of his utilitarian goals, Bentham aimed to develop a ‘scientific’ approach to punishment, applying a ‘science of pain’ as the foundation for his penal strategy. Bentham devoted himself to discovering the effect of pain on society (Draper, 2002: 9). He was also influenced, in this respect, by Helvétius (O’Malley, 2009: 5). Helvétius, in De l’esprit (On Mind), published in 1758, had argued that all human faculties are attributes of mere physical sensation, and that therefore there is no good and evil, only a competition between 31

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pleasure and pain. In this respect, it is interesting to note that Bentham’s source of knowledge on human behaviour and motives –​like that of Beccaria –​rests on sensationalism. Yet in developing a science of pain, Bentham took Helvétius’ ideas a step further. He created an analytical vocabulary based on what he took as scientific principles –​among them variability, used to measure concepts like degree or intensity, duration, certainty vs. uncertainty, and propinquity vs. remoteness (Stark, 1946: 597); equability, a measure of whether the pain inflicted by the punishment is appropriate for the crime; commensurability, or whether the punishment is proportionate to punishments meted out for other offences; and frugality, a measure of whether the punishment inflicts needless pain (O’Malley, 2009: 5–​6). In doing so, Bentham created a kind of analytic grid (O’Malley, 2009) for a logical and accurate system of punishment. His ambition was that the delivery of necessary pain could be rationally calculated and universally applied to prevent unnecessary pain (O’Malley, 2009: 5). Bentham’s commitment to the science of pain led him to reject the humanism of Beccaria, whom he otherwise admired (O’Malley, 2009: 2–​3), arguing that ‘even in his [Beccaria’s] work there is some reasoning drawn from false sources’ (Bentham, 1975: 40). In Bentham’s work too, we find an early version of Homo criminalis, based on the individualization of offenders. For Bentham, no two people are the same, and thus, no two crimes are the same. More precisely, the amount of pain needed to deter repetition of the same crime may differ between individuals. For the same offence, one might be deterred with just a small amount of pain, while another might require a significant amount of pain. Punishment, based on the science of pain, should accommodate these differences, so that the pain inflicted is appropriate for the individual case (Draper, 2002: 2). Of course, the individualism of the classical school and that of the positivist school are not alike. The former refers to individualism in terms of law and punishment; it is based on a liberal perception of individuals as distinct from social categories and hierarchies. As we shall see, the positivist version of individualism refers instead to individual pathology. But perhaps what essentially separates the classical school from the positivist school is the former’s willingness to accept the pleasure–​pain calculus of Helvétius and Hobbes as a general human flaw. It bears mention, however, that classical thinkers wrestled with different social settings and challenges than their counterparts among the positivists. This difference can perhaps explain the gap between 32

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the classical and positivist perspectives. I shall return to this difference at the end of this chapter.

An ideology of an imaginary bourgeois society In this section I aim to dissect the role of the classical school as an ideology for social control. I am interested in exploring the historical context in which classical criminology was moulded into such an ideology. In this regard, what was its relationship to the class structure? Of course, assuming any form of class bias goes against the manifest principles of classical criminology. The criminal jurisprudence and penology of the classical school introduced, and even celebrated, the equality of the law, which is based on liberal rational values. Yet few would argue that the doctrines of the classical school are wholly neutral and strictly purposeful in aiming to achieve the most desired result or utility. It is thus interesting to consider in what ways the classical school supported a rigid social structure. How did the classical school advance one class over another? What were its ideological influences, and in what ways has the classical school served as a legitimizing ideology to preserve a particular mode of social control? We should begin with the realization that no group or school of thought is free from ideology. The classical school, of course, is no exception. The critique of ideology offers two main perspectives: the epistemological and the historical socio-​political. The epistemological account generally treats ideology as ‘false consciousness’; that is to say, a system of ideas or mental constructs through which individuals understand their world, but which do not accurately reflect social reality. In the historical socio-​political account, ideology is conceived as a tool that maintains and reproduces the interests of a certain group. We shall follow both perspectives here. As part of the Enlightenment, the classical school emphatically opposed theological approaches to law and punishment, including religious symbolism (Shaar, 2018: 14). For the members of the classical school, theology and metaphysics were a source of false consciousness. Indeed, it is widely recognized that its members advocated for a secular conception of the law, and rejected the idea that social relations are constituted from the divine will. They thus promoted ‘separating crime from sin, spiritual powers from temporal power and ecclesiastical institutions from secular courts. … [They insisted that] crime [is] not a theological concept’ (Beirne, 1993: 22). 33

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Against this claim, Carl Schmitt observed that all modern legal-​ political frameworks are based on theological concepts. In his words: ‘All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts’ (2005: 36). This means that all modern systems of thought and institutions, and certainly those concerned with social control, are founded on a system of beliefs which is separate from the body of knowledge it justifies. If we follow this logic, then the knowledge and programmes produced by the classical school, which claims superiority over metaphysical sources, are themselves entrenched in some primordial source of values and interests. This primordial source precedes inductive or deductive logic, which the members of the classical school proudly declared as their intellectual origin. Taking this logic to its conclusion, it could be argued that classical criminology, in itself, contains translated seeds of the very doctrine it considers to be the source of false consciousness. It is interesting to consider, in this respect, how theological concepts such as sacredness continue to serve as a pillar of legitimacy for the knowledge and programmes produced by the classical school. We can begin with humanism. Humanism is the replacement of God by man, such that it is men who now carry sacredness. A belief in the value and centrality of men is a source of justification for the proposed social regime. Yet in the envisioned social structure of the classical school, sacredness rests not in man per se, but in white men with property. Just as in traditional societies one could not challenge the existence of God, in a modern capitalist society one cannot question the existence of private property. But more important, the classical school reveals its false consciousness in the idea that all men are sacred, and that its vision of a more perfect society (a heavenly kingdom on earth?) is for everyone, when in fact most of the population (women, non-​whites, and white men without property) were not included. Put simply, the false consciousness disseminated by classical criminology is its alleged universalism: the claim that it is built on a shared vision and purpose and works to benefit all. Of course, the philosophy of the classical school was not the only intellectual tendency of the eighteenth century. The intellectual ferment of the time also produced atheist, materialist, and determinist conceptions of human behaviour. These conceptions toyed with the idea that morality and reason were products of the environment (Beirne, 1993: 15). As such, from a social perspective, their logical 34

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conclusion was much more radical than the programme of the classical school. If crime was caused by social conditions, then the solution to crime and misery might entail deep social reform, or even revolution (Jenkins, 1984: 113). In this respect, the classical school’s relatively successful reception derived from its relative conservatism compared with contemporary ideologies such as materialism. It offered an ‘enlightened’ conception of human behaviour, one which did not entail the social implications of materialism (Jenkins, 1984: 113). Thus, from a historical socio-​political perspective, we can relate the classical school to the historical social group it represented: the rising bourgeoisie. In this respect, Beccaria is said to have embodied the blending of aristocratic values with ‘the ideology and interests of capitalist agriculture and the new bourgeoisie’ (Beirne, 1993: 16). Bentham, for his part, was a central contributor to the shaping of ‘bourgeois’ philosophy and nineteenth-​century liberalism (O’Malley, 2009: 8). Both can be regarded as organic intellectuals who promoted the rising of the bourgeois class and fought against the privileges of the landed aristocracy (Taylor et al, 1973; see also Agozino, 2003: 20). The members of the classical school showed great bravery in going against the ruling powers of their time, and against the social order. Beccaria, if we remember, initially published On Crimes and Punishments anonymously but eventually allowed his name to be associated with it; and Bentham was a member of the Philosophical Radicals. Yet as organic intellectuals of the bourgeoisie they were far less motivated with respect to how they operated vis-​à-​vis the lower classes. In this sense they can be considered conservatives, and not just because ultimately they expanded the scope (though not the severity) of disciplinary punishment (Lanier et al, 2018: 61). Rather, it is because they did not fully address the rigid social hierarchy of their day. On the contrary, they actually helped to establish and reproduce the social conditions oppressing the strata lower down the social chain. In short, as part of the emerging bourgeoisie, the members of the classical school played a dual role (Young, 1981). On the one hand, they were liberators against the feudal order, the landed aristocracy and monarchs, demanding political rights hitherto denied them –​fighting for democratization and procedural justice. At the same time, they aspired to secure their own newly won social position and property against the growing numbers of urban poor. Thus, they acted as guardians of this new social order against the so-​called ‘dangerous classes’ –​the indigent, the idle, vagabonds, and so on. Hence their great 35

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support for efforts to address the rising levels of street crime (Lanier et al, 2018: 63) and other threats to public order. The humanization of punishment had great appeal for the bourgeoisie, serving their interest in an efficient means of protecting property (Jenkins, 1984: 116). Hence, classical theory is above all a theory of social control in the service of the bourgeoisie (Taylor et al, 1973: 2), with the classical texts serving as the source of ideology needed for the legitimate maintenance of order. Social contract theory, in this respect, can be seen historically as an ideological framework for the protection of the rising bourgeoisie (Taylor et al, 1973: 3). Beccaria’s social contract theory builds on Diderot’s entry ‘Political Authority’ in the first volume of the Encyclopédie to articulate a political legitimation of social control (Paternoster and Fisher, 2017: 176), via the idea that all members of society opted to embrace the social contract for the sake of self-​defence and an end to the ‘war of all against all’. This idea was highly appealing to the rising bourgeoisie, as it justified a social order that defended the sanctity of property and rationalized inequality (Jenkins, 1984: 116). Specifically, it legitimized a notion that society owes nothing to the victims of the social order, and that those who break the law do so by choice, not necessity. Hence, they are fully accountable, and it is the right and duty of the state to punish them. Classical criminology, moreover, exemplifies bourgeois ideology inasmuch as it insists that it is committed to equality. But ‘equality before the law’ is a bourgeois fiction (Beirne, 1993: 16). The replacement of arbitrary justice with a rational system of sentencing was indeed admirable but, at the end of the day, it was a myth (Beirne, 1993). Securing formal equality while ignoring substantive equality has proven to be a hollow endeavour (Agozino, 2003: 20). A supposedly ‘neutral’ law which, for example, prohibits sleeping under bridges is, of course, not at all neutral. It means nothing to those fortunate enough to have a home, and everything to those who have nowhere else to shelter from the rain. The classical school never really addressed the connection between (non-​)ownership of property and criminality (Taylor et al, 1973: 4). For if there is a clear reason for theft –​the ‘right of exclusive property’ –​then crime cannot be seen as irrational. … For if the poor steal from the rich because they are poor, then it follows that punishment involving the deprivation of the criminal’s property can only exacerbate the problem. (Taylor et al, 1973: 6) 36

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Indeed, accepting a connection between poverty and crime challenges the core ideological foundation of the classical school –​its narrative of responsibilization, in which people freely choose to commit crime and are thus fully culpable for their actions, is undermined by the connection to social conditions. One might argue that the classical logic would be sustainable as long as poverty retained a feudal or semi-​ feudal form; but with the transition to the poverty of an industrialized society, the free-​will doctrine of the classical school started to lose its ground among social elites. I shall return to this point later. For now, let me note that the classical school operated at a time when a modern free society still seemed an achievable goal, or at least a framework not yet fully established; and as such its adherents could still cherish the promise of a free and equal society. Furthermore, social contract philosophy and the promise of a universal free and equal society cannot stand if we take into account, as we must, other concurrent bourgeois political projects, such as colonialism and the slave trade. In this regard, the ideology of the social contract, which is at the heart of classical penal legitimacy, rests on very shaky ground. If we remember, Beccaria asserted that the right to punish stems from the fact that, as he saw it, those who break the law knowingly violate the social contract into which they had freely entered (Agozino, 2003: 16). Yet even if we accept the free acceptance of the social contract by all men (and only men) as more than a constructed narrative (and, some would argue, a product of false consciousness), it is clear that this applies only in the metropole and not in the colony. Under colonialism and the slave trade, punishment is directed at the unfree; it therefore becomes arbitrary and thus unjustifiable according to Beccaria (Agozino, 2003). The colonial other is wholly excluded from the rational system by which classical liberal theory –​of which Beccaria was of course one of the central authors –​anchors the right to punish in a criminal proceeding conducted according to the law. Penal action against the colonial other –​and anyone else not definable as a legal subject –​is better articulated under the concept of enemy penology (Krasmann, 2018). Enemy penology is a doctrine whereby punishment is meted out based not on penal law and questions of culpability, but on degree of dangerousness. The dangerous other –​ or, if you will, the enemy –​must be dealt with via measures more akin to emergency powers or security actions than to punishment (Krasmann, 2018: 2). It should be stressed here that, to some degree, a similar logic underpins Western social contract theory even for white 37

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men with property, particularly in Rousseau and Fichte (Krasmann, 2018: 2). For those thinkers, any culprit has turned against society, and is therefore to be treated as deserving of exclusion, either through expulsion or execution (Krasmann, 2018). Rousseau, in particular, in the Social Contract, explicitly denied the criminal the status of citizen (Krasmann, 2018). But even if we follow this logic, for the offender to legitimately be excluded the foundation of social contract philosophy must stand –​that is, those subject to exclusion must have initially been part of the contract. This is not the case for people from cultures subject to the colonial empires of the West, where most members of the classical school lived and worked (Krasmann, 2018: 21). Moreover, we find traces of enemy penology even with respect to excluded populations in the West, such as women and the poor. In fact, one can draw a straight line between these two populations. Bourgeois enlightened ideology actually embraced and furthered existing social hierarchies based on attributes such as race, class, and gender, while legitimizing them on the grounds of rational and objective logic. More precisely, while bourgeois ideology celebrated the rationality of one small group, namely white men with property, it refused to acknowledge rationality in most of the population (Krasmann, 2018). Women, poor men, and people of colour were not part of any social contract and were excluded from the body politic. The members of the classical school helped support this bourgeois ideology, even its darker sides. For example, in the competition between ‘justice’ and ‘security’, Bentham chose the latter (O’Malley, 2009: 6). He thus operated based on fear of the dangerous and not on liberal values, which sets him, in this respect, closer to the doctrine of enemy penology. Indeed, while it was Bentham who made famous the notion of ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number’, some of the direct outcomes of this ethos were prison and penal slavery (Newman and Marongiu, 1990: 340). The rational utilitarian ethos legitimized the massive use of imprisonment for a particular segment of society, and allowed these brutal policies to appear as liberal and enlightened (Newman and Marongiu, 1990: 342). But the main way in which Bentham and his peers dealt with the contradiction between inequality and exclusiveness was to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor. In this, they adhere to Locke’s dictum that while the labouring classes have an interest in civil society –​that is, an incentive to be part of the social contract –​they 38

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can never be full members of it so long as they do not own property (Taylor et al, 1973: 6). This logic aims to conceal the fundamental distrust of the bourgeoisie toward those unfortunate enough not to own property. Yet it exposes the classical school’s definition of otherness. The other is one who should be free, but who is not free –​ and is therefore undeserving and excluded. This distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor was the organizing principle of the British Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which was, more or less, the realization of Bentham’s blueprint. Bentham’s plan for workhouses was outlined in his Tracts on Poor Laws and Pauper Management, published in the last years of the eighteenth century. Bentham (and others) argued that by providing handouts and charity, societies only deepen the problem of dependency. Their solution was to replace handouts and charity with work (Stokes, 2001: 711). Thus, Bentham called for a system of ‘industry houses’, which would provide employment for the deserving working poor, and welfare services only for the disabled or unwell (Jeremy Bentham, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Following Bentham’s outline, the Poor Law made support available only to the deserving poor, defined as those willing to work (as opposed to the undeserving and work-​shy), through admittance to a workhouse (Stokes, 2001: 712). Notably, the Poor Law of 1834 still addressed social difficulties that preceded the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, at the time the Industrial Revolution was not yet especially noticeable in most of Western Europe, and even in England and Wales. The measures introduced by the act –​including the system of workhouses –​were not meant to resolve the social pathologies of industrial capitalism, but the food scarcity which followed the Napoleonic wars and years of bad crops, which increased the price of bread. As we know, classical criminology is older than the Poor Law by almost a century. The period during which Beccaria worked preceded both the industrial and French revolutions. In the 1790s, when Bentham published his Tracts on Poor Laws and Pauper Management, Western Europe was overwhelmingly rural (Hobsbawm, 1996). The population had not yet begun the boom which would characterize the second half of the nineteenth century, and most people still lived and died in their birthplace (Hobsbawm, 1996: 10). Only in 1851 did the urban population begin to surpass the rural population, beginning in England (Hobsbawm, 1996: 11). Thus, the classical thinkers still 39

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tackled social problems that related to the quasi-​feudal regimes of their time. Under this quasi-​feudal ethos, it was still socially acceptable for the poor to demand food. Classical criminology and programmes such as the Poor Law sought to change this culture, advancing the notion that demanding food is degrading –​a sign of fault and failure. In adopting the episteme of the rational self, advocating for individual responsibilization, promoting the social contract and utilitarian philosophy, the classical thinkers were not reacting to an industrial social order, but endorsing one. In this respect, classical scholars took part in imagining and then working toward establishing a bourgeois society. We should see their role as promoting this ideology: a society of individuals free to pursue their own interests. They, particularly Bentham, took part in introducing a purely utilitarian individualistic system of social behaviour (Hobsbawm, 1996: 200). According to this social logic, social control depends upon self-​control (Seddon, 2009: 27); hence the criminology of the self, which introduces a narrative of individual responsibilization. If we follow Foucault’s analytical framework on power/​knowledge and the modes of power (sovereign power, disciplinary power, and biopower), classical criminology falls under the first of these, sovereignty –​a type of control focused mainly on preserving authority, with no attempt at reforming those so controlled (Foucault, 2007; Valverde, 2017b). Hence the classical school’s adherence to criminal jurisprudence and juridical mechanisms. In this sense, we should understand the ideological role of social contract philosophy –​ promoting the myth of universalism –​as a way to justify sovereignty. Bentham, with his strong advocacy for the power of the legislator over society, also represents commitment to sovereignty in the power/​ knowledge scheme. Yet we can also detect in his life work (for example, the panopticon) a transition to what Foucault terms the disciplinary mode (that is, emphasizing reform). The Poor Law too, and its system of workhouses, is a step toward the disciplinary mode. The ideology of classical criminology could be sustained as the organizing knowledge for social control so long as the profound social impacts of the Industrial Revolution were still limited. Once the ugly social effects of industrialization exploded –​‘poverty of the most shocking kind’, as Eric Hobsbawm writes (1996: 298) –​it became harder and harder to adhere to a doctrine of free will as a rationalization for crime. As a result, many thinkers, particularly among the social 40

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elites, concluded that a direct line existed between social conditions and social pathologies such as crime. Others interpreted the horrors of the slums as a sign that their dwellers suffered from some type of personal pathology, whether physical or mental. Moreover, with the growing impact of the Industrial Revolution and the concomitant pressure on the penal system, it became apparent that even the harsh utilitarian penal calculus simply did not work –​offenders were not deterred (Garland, 1985b). All of this did not mean that social elites suddenly supported class reform. On the contrary. The bourgeois elite refused to allow the labouring poor (any more than colonial subjects) to participate in society as equals, and perhaps even use their power to effect political change. As the growing social stratum of the labouring poor was thrown into a new reality, in which all their traditional protections disappeared (Hobsbawm, 1996: 200), they became a direct threat, and needed to be either disciplined or excluded. Thus, it was back to the ideological drawing board. There was a demand for a new type of knowledge to control the lower classes, who in the first place were never part of any social contract. They needed to be managed by a new programme, and this new programme needed a criminological justification. Degeneration theories advocated by positivist criminology became such justification. Of course, classical criminology would continue to shape Western criminal law and penal systems. Indeed, about a century later, with positivist criminology itself coming under scrutiny and ‘the age of control’ (Garland, 2001) coming to define knowledge production in criminology, the philosophy of classical criminology would make a comeback. Yet, for now, it was losing its ground to the positivist school, which many believed was better equipped to justify social separation and control. A new ideology of individual reform or exclusion was in demand, at least as a supplementary criminological ideology, one driven by the compulsion to discipline those who do not contribute to industrial society; hence positivist criminology as the criminology of the other. For this discussion we turn to the next chapter.

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3

The Early Days of Positivist Criminology: An Ideology of Universalism and Otherness The positivist school in criminology came to define the field for a century, or more. Indeed, even today, it is almost redundant to use the word ‘positivist’ before ‘criminology’; criminology means positivist criminology to most people. Historically, the advent of the positivist school marked a new paradigm for thinking and producing knowledge about delinquency, crime, and penology. It represented a new way of defining social problems and social solutions, motivated by a cluster of emerging social challenges for governmentality: namely, how to administer, control, and regulate populations as the appalling poverty begot by the Industrial Revolution –​‘the ugliest world in which man has ever lived’ (Hobsbawm, 1996: 298) –​became incontrovertible. The positivist school was part of a greater movement of already existing social activism and scholarly work that came to answer dual and competing objectives: to preserve and justify the social system that produced these horrific social conditions, and the positions of those who enjoyed its fruits, while at the same time maintaining an adherence to Enlightenment ideals such as equality and human dignity. The ‘solution’, if one can call it that, was found in degeneration theories: yes, all men are in theory created equal, but some are in fact created less equal than others, subject to some form of physical or social pathology which made them incapable of adopting a normative social life. The problem, in other words, lay not in the system, but in the individuals whose social degradation was seen as both symptom and signifier. This ‘solution’ can be defined as an ideology of otherness, combining universalism and exclusion. Otherness means that universal 42

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ideals do stand, but for some, their otherness excludes them from the rule. Given their pathology, these individuals cannot be party in the regular sense to the social contract, as held by the classical thinkers; instead, they need special treatment; and if they cannot be reformed, then they must somehow be excluded. This new understanding also marks the transition from sovereignty to discipline, in Foucault’s (2007) terms (briefly discussed at the end of the previous chapter). In short, the positivist school rose to dominance as the leading paradigm for criminological knowledge production in the late nineteenth century, the ‘age of degeneration’ (Valverde, 2017a: 336), a doctrine shared by many of the social elites of the time. It challenged the classical school’s conception of all people as free-​willed rational beings. Indeed, in the early days of the positivist school, its founders ‘saw its role as the systemic elimination of the free-​will “metaphysics” of the classical school’ (Taylor et al, 1973: 10). In this respect, the positivist school in criminology introduced a paradigm shift, ‘a new form of knowledge’ (Garland 1985b: 109) that focused on the criminal rather than on the crime. As Enrico Ferri, one of the founding fathers of the positivist school, put it, ‘We must first understand the criminal who offends, before we can study and understand his crime’ (2004 [1901]: 6). As such, positivist research is generally an aetiological endeavour based on a medicalized discourse –​an assumption that delinquent behaviour is a result of some special disposition or pathology. The offender is considered as someone intrinsically different from the non-​offender, as an other. This ‘criminology of the other’ (Garland, 1996, 1999, 2001) undermines, if not totally uproots, the idea that criminal acts are the outcome of choice, freedom, and rational calculation.

Positivism: a short historical review This chapter offers a short review of the foundations of positivism –​ a research field characterized by a certain methodological approach. The discussion here, however, does not address positivist methodology as such, instead, I make the case for an ideological interpretation of positivism. This is, of course, a provocation of sorts, because positivism is a doctrine that largely denies the validity of subjectivity, value judgements, or metaphysical speculation. On the contrary, it is based on a conception whereby ‘the data of sense experience are the only object and the supreme criterion of human knowledge’ 43

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(Positivism, The Catholic Encyclopedia). That is to say, in the positivist worldview, valid knowledge is produced only through observation of natural phenomena, with conclusions drawn strictly from empirical evidence. In subverting this common assumption, this book argues that the history of positivism in general, and positivist criminology in particular, is also embedded in an ideology centred on the control of knowledge –​all the more so when it comes to using knowledge for purposes of social control by constructing and legitimizing conceptions of otherness. Although positivism, or a positivist approach toward knowledge production, has been a recurrent theme in the history of Western thought, its modern form was articulated and developed by the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–​1857) in the early nineteenth century.1 The positivist approach is premised on duality. It assumes that reality is separate from the individual who observes it, meaning that it can be objectively captured. Even more: it assumes not only that reality exists separately or independently from the observer, but also that it exists beyond the human mind writ large. Thus, one cannot rely solely on thought processes (cognitive activity) when studying reality, but must derive all knowledge of reality from human experience. As ‘the fundamental supposition of the experiential foundation of all (viable) knowledge’ (Giddens, 1975: 2),2 positivism asserts a strict separation between the realms of objective facts and subjective ethics. This means in turn that our knowledge of the world is based on what we can measure.3 Knowledge, in this respect, is aimed at possible applications (Habermas, 1963: 9). In the context of criminology, this system of thought (known as positivist criminology) aims to systematically study crime as the outcome of delinquent behaviour, which has actual existence in the world, and thus can be seen as an expression of some type of pathology (physiological, mental, or social). It shares with the general positivist social disciplines the belief that the natural and social sciences share a harmony of methods (in that both are similarly subject to general laws) (Jenkins, 1982: 347–3​ 48; Beirne, 1987: 1141). As noted, positivism –​as a philosophical system –​rejects the validity of metaphysical speculation. Yet one can also treat positivism itself as a religious doctrine, one in which humanity replaces an omnipotent God as the object of veneration (Positivism, The Catholic Encyclopedia). Indeed, Comte himself explicitly called positivism ‘the religion of humanity’ (Positivism, The Catholic Encyclopedia). This side of the positivist movement is often ignored or forgotten –​unsurprisingly, 44

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given its materialistic and deterministic foundations (Jenkins, 1982: 347–​348). Yet the positivist system was in many ways a response to the crisis of legitimacy –​the political turmoil, fragmented cultural tissue, and loss of a common organizing dogma –​that followed the ‘death of God’ or disenchantment (Max Weber’s ‘die Entzauberung der Welt’; literally, ‘the de-​magic-​ing of the world’). As Dario Melossi puts it, ‘The problem was to re-​establish a universe of general meaning in a deeply divided and Babel-​like society, in which most of the traditional ties had been lost’ (1990: 119). In this respect, at least some of the founding fathers of positivism hoped to fill the role previously held by organized religion. This is true even if, as some argue, disenchantment as a defining aspect of modernity is a process that was never fully realized, or is even a myth (Storm, 2017).4 That is, positivism is in itself not purely secular, in the sense of devoid of ‘magic’. Rather, it too is built on secularized theological constructs; chiefly, the idea that it is the supreme method for discovering and validating knowledge. In this context, we can recall the French Idéologues. This group of Parisian intellectuals, active in the first decades of the 1800s, introduced the modern concept of ideology as a rational and scientific idea. For the Idéologues, under the leadership of Antoine Destutt de Tracy (1754–​1836), ideology was the ultimate scientific tool –​a universal, all-​ encompassing means to validate all knowledge. Indeed, the term itself means the science (‘-​logy’) of ideas. The notion of ideology acquired its negative connotations only later, under Napoleon, whose political rivalry with the Idéologues led him to define ideology as ideas which are disconnected from reality. The Idéologues aspired to discover the very nature of knowledge –​to reveal the processes by which ideas develop, and thereby to gain the power to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Yet in their pursuit of this goal –​in their desire to be rid of metaphysics and to abolish uncertainty –​they were in fact on a theological quest, translating a theological aspiration into secularized form. In fact, this is exactly what Napoleon argued. He considered the Idéologues as no different from the ‘metaphysical advocates’ of the Church, in that the Idéologues worshipped reason as if it were a new scripture. For them, reason had no negation, the same way God’s scripture has no negation. Jumping forward again from the Idéologues to the work of Comte, positivism too was a system that rejected metaphysical advocacy, but, in a sense, aspired to something very much like it. Positivism too had a universalist aspiration to introduce not just a method of inquiry, but 45

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the method –​an ideal system to bring together all human knowledge (Funkenstein, 1986: 6). Indeed, as noted, Comte considered his new form of empiricism as a new ‘religion of humanity’ (Positivism, The Catholic Encyclopedia). Ultimately, he even organized positivism as a secular religion, ‘complete with priests and a calendar of saints’.5 One can argue, as this book does, that even when using a positivist methodology to study natural phenomena, one is never purely objective. People always rely on preconceptions in approaching and interpreting their subject matter. Yet where positivism’s affinity to a religious system and its universalist aspirations are most significant is when it seeks to be relevant –​to affect policy or simply shape social organization. Comte envisioned a society in which all social problems can be solved by scientists using positivist methods of research (Jeffery, 1959: 7–​8). While he was a ‘sober analyst of scientific history and method’, Comte was, at the same time, ‘the creator of the bizarre utopia of the “Positive Polity” ’ (Giddens, 1975: 2). Indeed, Comte ‘was first and foremost a social reformer, and he was interested in science because he thought of it as an instrument for the reorganization of human life’ (Jeffery, 1959: 8). Comte argued that the social purpose of positivism was to replace theology in both morality and politics, taking the role once filled by religion in shaping social organization6 (Positivism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Thus, positivism had a strong connection to policy making from the outset. After Comte, the positivist movement divided into two groups: the dissidents and the orthodox. The dissidents (against the Church) held positivism to be solely a scientific method –​a tool for knowledge discovery. Moreover, for them, this method limits human knowledge to the study of experiential facts, while separating it from what may exist outside experience. In many respects, their understanding persists to the present day, and remains the most common definition of positivism. The orthodox, on the other hand, continued to embrace both the scientific and the religious aspects of positivism. For them, positivism was not just a scientific method; it was also a means to shape morality (Positivism, The Catholic Encyclopedia) and, as such, to organize and structure social relations. Overall, positivism, despite the internal debate over its nature, gained adherents as the nineteenth century progressed. Over the years, other groups, such as the Vienna Circle in the 1920s and 1930s, developed positivism and refined its definition. For the Vienna Circle, who termed it logical empiricism, logical positivism, or neopositivism, 46

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this was through their renewed denial of metaphysics, which they viewed as not just false, but as ‘cognitively empty and meaningless’ (Vienna Circle, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). All in all, positivism remained known as a method of observation and induction, free from subjectivity or metaphysics. And yet, to use the words of the historiographer Helge Kragh, it remains true that the positivist belief in a value-​free, culturally independent science is a myth (Kragh, 1987; quoted in Rafter, 2004: 984).

The beginnings of positivist criminology: thinking otherness The origins of criminology are commonly attached to either the late eighteenth century and the rise of the classical school, or to the late nineteenth century with the Italian positivist school. Yet its starting point is actually a matter of debate (Wetzell, 2000: 15; Rafter: 2004) and the origin of positivist criminology is even more contentious. There are good reasons to pinpoint Lombroso and his Italian school as the starting point, on the grounds that they not only sought to systematically study the criminal, but consciously and actively worked to establish a scholarly paradigm and a new professional identity as criminal anthropologists (Nye, 1976; Wetzell, 2000; Rafter, 2011). Yet the Italian school was not the first to produce knowledge about the offender as an ‘other’ in a way that challenged classical thinking. Against the common notion, found in most textbooks, which sees Lombroso and his students as the founding fathers of positivist criminology, scholars who have studied the history of positivist criminology more meticulously have suggested that its origins actually go further back, to the moment when a medical–​biological discourse was applied to the explanation of criminal behaviour. Indeed, Lombroso and his followers were hardly the first to use a medical–​biological explanation to crime, or, more precisely, to criminal tendencies (Wetzell, 2000: 21). Niel Davie and David Garland push back the starting date by a little, to the 1860s and 1870s, and trace the origins of positivist criminology to the work of prison physicians (Rafter, 2004: 999). Robert Nye (1984) pushes the date even further back, to 1841, when a prison doctor first used phrenology to classify different kinds of criminals. Leonard Savitz and his colleagues (1977) simply identify Franz Joseph Gall, the father of phrenology,7 as the first criminologist (Rafter, 47

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2004: 999).8 Piers Beirne, on the other hand, argues that the moral statistician Adolphe Quetelet, rather than Lombroso or Gall, should be acknowledged as the founding father of positivist criminology (Beirne, 1987: 1142). (Garland also acknowledges developments in statistical data collection by governmental institutions and private research; Garland, 1985b: 112). Other scholars have put forward analytical organizing principles to mark the origins of positivist criminological thought. Mariana Valverde, for example, is of the opinion that to locate the early stages of positivist criminology, we should look back to the 1830s and 1840s when the ‘social question’, or the notion of the ‘social as a problem’, emerged, particularly in Britain and France (Valverde, 2017a: 326). Applying an analytical categorization, Nicole Rafter (2004), following the work of Fink (1938) and Werlinder (1978), associates the origins of positivist criminology with early attempts to apply scientific methods to the study of crime. Such studies focused attention toward the brain and, more generally, toward the ‘biological fault’ theory of criminality (Rafter, 2005: 74). As such, she argues that the field known today as psychiatry was the true origin of positivist criminology (2004: 999). Rafter (2004) specifically locates this development in its early manifestation, which focused on diagnosing moral insanity. Eventually, she argues, the concept of moral insanity became coupled with degeneration theory, aided by growing knowledge of heredity. In this respect, what distinguishes psychiatry from phrenology (and its close cousin, physiognomy) and degeneration theory is that the former survived as a science, whereas the latter were eventually rejected (Rafter, 2004: 1002). When we speak about applying scientific methods to study social problems such as crime, what we are actually referring to is experimentation (Young, 1981: 16) –​that is, using methods such as observation, classification, and induction to formulate causal laws (Garland, 1985b: 112). This development was part of a larger and more general drive to use scientific knowledge as a way to solve social problems (O’Connor, 2001: 3). The interest in the causes of crime was just one of many governing endeavours. Science, with its new emphasis on observation, took hold in Western Europe and North America as a source of knowledge with which a more perfect society could be built –​and as such, a sign of modernity. The new scientific study of crime joined classical thought in challenging older conceptions of crimes as sins, which were now replaced by notions 48

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of insanity and criminality (Rafter, 2005: 70). And not just crime was redefined this way. Other activities which were considered a threat to decent society, such as drinking, were redefined as signs of disease, rather than wilful bad habits. Following Valverde, Rafter, and Garland, I submit that we should trace the origins of positivist criminology to a systematic way of thinking that relates social misconduct to otherness. That is, we should seek the beginnings of positivist criminality in a belief that harmful conduct is the product of some pathology that separates those who have it from the normative segments of society. We can locate this intuitive approach to crime not only in the application of a scientific approach, but, more so, in an a priori assumption that what needs to be discovered in the criminal is some impediment that is the cause of delinquent behaviour. We can redefine the proposed starting points of positivist criminology as moments at which the discourse of otherness entered and shaped the vocabulary of the discipline. Let us consider each in turn, starting with moral insanity. Moral insanity One of the first chapters in the application of scientific knowledge9 to understand deviance, via a classification of otherness, involved the notion of homicidal monomania, and the related concept of moral insanity. These concepts developed in the early nineteenth century, particularly in France and Britain, and were defined as some derangement or partial insanity whose main or even only symptom was a sudden act of crime (Jones, 2017: 267). The identification of such a condition naturally called for a new type of professional (as opposed to legal professionals), and for a new type of knowledge to be used in criminal legal practice. This new knowledge thus introduces tension between the legal and medical discourses. Moral insanity theory developed against the dominance of the classical paradigm and before hereditarianism took hold later in the nineteenth century (Rafter, 2004: 1002–​1003), and it garnered international interest early on (Rafter, 2004: 993). We can list Benjamin Rush (United States), Philippe Pinel (France), and James Cowles Prichard (England) among those who promoted the idea, and who attempted to study moral insanity (and its connection to crime) scientifically. Initially, the idea of moral insanity assumed that the 49

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condition could be temporary or episodic, meaning that one could pass into and out of it at different times, with the only evidence for its presence being criminal thoughts or behaviour (that is, with delusions or other signs of madness all absent). The theory managed to survive various critiques, and become a key concept in the hereditarian paradigm of criminology. This paradigm eventually merged with degeneration theory, which became the most important criminological concept in Europe in the mid-​to late nineteenth century (Rafter, 2011). Degeneration and hereditarianism asserted a stricter version of otherness, as a permanent condition rather than one which could be temporary or episodic. Thus, by the 1870s, degeneration and heredity became the dominant causal explanations for delinquency, displacing the notion of moral insanity. Still, moral insanity continued to be influential, inasmuch as it served as the basis for the psychiatric theory of psychopathy, and as the core for the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder (Rafter, 2004: 1003). Physiognomy Johann Kaspar (or Caspar) Lavater (1741–​1801), the father of modern physiognomy, was a Swiss poet, writer, philosopher, and theologian. He published his essays on physiognomy roughly at the same time as Beccaria published On Crimes and Punishments, meaning that if we consider physiognomy as the starting point of positivist criminology, then both schools (the classical and the positivist) share a similar starting date, as opposed to being a century apart. Physiognomy (from the Greek physis, meaning ‘nature’, and gnomon, meaning ‘judge’ or ‘interpreter’) was the practice of interpreting people’s character or personality from their outer appearance, especially their face. This practice had a long history, and was well known, for example, in ancient Greece. In Europe, the esteem of physiognomy faded around the sixteenth century, as the practice became associated with charlatans and mountebanks. Lavater sought to reclaim physiognomy from its negative medieval associations and assert a new way to define the features of otherness. Under his baton, physiognomy gained new popularity as a means of identifying criminal tendencies. Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy was reprinted and translated into many languages (Graham, 1961: 298–​299), making him one of the most acclaimed figures in Europe (Graham, 1961: 297) until physiognomy again fell out of favour in the late nineteenth century. 50

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Lavater considered physiognomy as the science or knowledge that ‘corresponds between the external and internal man, the visible superficies and the invisible contents’ (Lavater, n.d.: 27; Rafter, 2005: 70). His method (like that of the ancients) was based on systematic examination of the different parts of the face (eyes, brows, mouth, nose, and so on) from every angle, both separately and in proportion. Yet although he aspired to make physiognomy scientific, he never actually tried to develop it into a rigorous scientific practice (Rafter, 2005: 71). Indeed, he was rather eclectic in his claims (not unlike Lombroso as we shall see), mixing scientific observation with Christian theological thinking (DiCristina, 2015: 72). His objective was, in itself, quite theological: he took physiognomy as ‘the magic mirror of the soul’ (DiCristina, 2015: 72), and he used theological language –​‘heavenly wisdom’; ‘the gift of God’ (from Essays on Physiognomy: 10–1​ 1; DiCristina, 2015: 72). He also acknowledged the possibility of error in physiognomy, as in medicine. Just as a physician might fail to correctly diagnose and treat a patient, a physiognomist might misdiagnose a person’s character (DiCristina, 2015: 84).10 Phrenology Phrenology was developed and introduced late in the eighteenth century by a Viennese physician, Franz Joseph Gall (1758–​1828), and his most influential follower, the German physician Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776–​1832). Like physiognomy, the pseudoscience of phrenology demonstrates early nineteenth-​century hunger for a science of human psychology (Rafter, 2005: 71). Gall’s system was similar to physiognomy inasmuch as it also sought to detect inner qualities and character from external appearances, and the two systems are sometimes confused with one another (Van Wyhe, 2002: 24). Like physiognomy, phrenology defined the criminal by otherness, in this case based on the notion that defective or pathological brain functions could be discerned through the shape of the skull. Finally, the adherents of phrenology, like the physiognomists, sought to make their mark on policy (DiCristina, 2015: 72). Like the work of Lavater before him, Gall’s system had a profound impact –​so much so that the historian Erwin Ackerknecht compared Gall’s influence in the nineteenth century to that of Freud in the twentieth (Van Wyhe, 2002: 17).11 Gall’s work, and phrenology in general, helped establish a discourse that would later support late 51

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nineteenth-​century criminological theories such as degeneration theory and criminal anthropology (Rafter, 2005: 86). Auguste Comte, the father of positivism, was also influenced by Gall’s phrenology (Nye, 1985a: 661), and indeed borrowed from Gall his understanding of biology (Nye, 1985b: 52). Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Psychology (1855) followed, and introduced the ideas of Gall to British physiologists (Nye, 1985a: 661). We can say in general that, together with physiognomy, phrenology served as a major foundation for nineteenth-​century knowledge that asserted otherness. Despite Gall’s impact, or perhaps because of it, he had many enemies, including within the scientific community. Gall was respected for his anatomical knowledge, and his work was accepted by many observers as scientific due to his empirical approach. But he had to flee Vienna after the Austrian monarchy and the Church accused him of being a materialist and, as such, a threat to public morality. He moved to Paris, where he was initially welcomed; but the Parisian scientific establishment, led by the Institute of France, soon denounced his science as invalid. Without the work of Spurzheim, whose efforts established phrenology in Edinburgh12 and in the United States (Rafter, 2005: 75), Gall’s work might have disappeared from history without leaving a trace (Merton and Barber, 2003). In general, phrenology developed in two phases: a ‘scientific’ one from about 1800 to 1830, and a popularizing phase from about 1820 to 1850. Physicians and psychiatrists were no longer the driving force in the latter period (Rafter, 2005: 67). Indeed, by the 1830s, the scientific community had begun to recognize phrenology as pseudoscience (Rafter, 2005: 87).13 Yet despite the fact that phrenology failed to develop scientifically after the 1840s, its conceptions were integrated into the theory of degeneration, and thus continued to influence notions of deviance well into the 1920s (Rafter, 2005: 67). Hence, otherness became deeply entrenched in public discourse. This continued influence demonstrates the hunger of social elites to maintain a knowledge that legitimizes the social hierarchy by placing responsibility for harsh social conditions on the otherness of those at the bottom. Spurzheim, who was a champion of social reform, exploited this sentiment. As a result, phrenology had a profound impact on social reform movements during the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States, particularly with respect to mental illness (Zola-​Morgan, 1995: 372). 52

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Phrenology took hold at a time when classical conceptions were influencing and reshaping criminal jurisprudence, particularly in tempering the use of harsh punishments and capital punishment (Rafter, 2005: 78). Yet with the growing effects of industrialization and urbanization as well as enfranchisement, new challenges arose for securing social order. Towns and industrial areas grew rapidly, without planning or oversight, and with minimal efforts to secure or maintain basic services (Hobsbawm, 1996: 203). The social costs of these developments were dire, and the classical tailored penal system could not keep up. In this context, phrenology provided a philosophical foundation for new means of maintaining order (Rafter, 2005: 73). Phrenology promoted the idea that some people are intrinsically flawed, with criminal tendencies that are not susceptible to deterrence. The theory of phrenology thus justified longer –​and indeed, indefinite –​prison sentences for recidivist convicts, based on a doctrine whereby punishment must account for future risk, as opposed to the classical doctrine in which the punishment must fit the (past) offence. At the same time, phrenology offered a justification for implicit hierarchies that were challenged by egalitarian revolutions and reforms –​all while offering a veneer of modernity and scientific prestige. The theory was thus hugely attractive to social elites (Van Wyhe, 2002: 17).14 Moral statistics Another group of scholars who contributed significantly to the rise and establishment of positivist criminology were the moral statisticians. The most well-​known of these figures were Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer, and André-​Michel Guerry, a Parisian lawyer and social cartographer.15 Like the phrenologists, the moral statisticians had an impact on scientific developments far beyond criminology. Quetelet is considered the founder of the social sciences; and some regard him, rather than Comte, as the father of sociology (Beirne, 1993: 65). Quetelet’s principal work, A Treatise of Man and the Development of his Faculties (1835), is considered ‘one of the greatest books of the nineteenth century’ (Eknoyan, 2008: 47). Moral statisticians followed the conviction that there is basic harmony between the methods of the natural and social sciences –​that the same laws which govern the heavens and the earth also operate in the social world (Beirne, 1987: 1150; Beirne, 1993: 155). Quetelet, for 53

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example, aimed to identify social laws which behave with mechanical regularity, by aggregating large numbers of empirical observations –​a methodology that he termed first social mechanics and then social physics (Beirne, 1987: 1150).16 Justifying his project, Quetelet asserted that ‘to deny the fact that people are subject to laws is more offensive to the divinity than the very research which we intend to do’ (quoted in Beirne, 1987: 1152). The collection and use of data for social control did not begin with the moral statisticians. Indeed, as early as the Restoration, governments were using statistics to facilitate the social regulation of the ‘dangerous classes’17 (Beirne, 1987). Yet it was the early nineteenth-​century creed that the penal system would control the ‘dangerous classes’ which firmly established the statistical movement as a tool for social research and control (DiCristina, 2015: 34; see also, Beirne, 1993: 67–​75). The science of moral statistics developed during the early decades of the nineteenth century as the new challenges of governmentality led several European polities to begin collecting data on a growing array of social metrics.18 France was the first country to gather national statistics on crime, starting in 1826, when the Ministry of Justice began annually recording data on crimes against persons and property in its Compte Général de la Justice Criminelle.19 France also collected and quantified data pertaining to prostitution, incarceration, literacy, education, insanity, poverty, life expectancy, suicide, marriage, and other variables thought to be related to social pathology, giving rise to the term ‘moral statistics’ (DiCristina, 2015: 134). Moral statistics anticipated later theoretical developments in positivist criminology. Beirne (1993: 6) argues that in the work of the moral statisticians, particularly that of Quetelet, we find implicit ‘a full-​fledged Homo criminalis’ –​that is, a set of unique individual characteristics reflecting social and biological pathologies, including pathologies of both the body and the mind. The moral statisticians, and Quetelet in particular, did not endorse the more unsophisticated notions of degeneration common at the time, but their work did support the notion of otherness that was so central to Western nineteenth-​century thinking. They laid the foundation for ‘a rigid binary opposition between normality and deviation and provided the epistemological core for the dominance of biologism, mental hereditarianism, and economism in positivist criminology’ (Beirne, 1987: 1140). As such, they prepared the ground for Lombroso and even the social ecology theory of the Chicago School (Beirne, 1987). 54

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With respect to the causes of crime, Quetelet argued that ‘society itself contains the germs of all crimes committed. It is the social state, in some measure, which prepares these crimes, and the criminal is merely the instrument which executes them’ (quoted in Beirne, 1987: 65). This statement, with its sociological stance, is interesting in light of Quetelet’s argument elsewhere that ‘man carries at birth the germs of all the qualities which develop successively and in greater proportions’, in which the influence of Gall’s and Spurzheim’s phrenology is unmistakable (quoted in Beirne, 1987: 1152). Still, for Quetelet, the observation that crime statistics fluctuate only slightly from year to year means that crime is a constant, and that crime must exist apart from the individual offender –​which in turn implies that crime is necessarily a product of social organization (Beirne, 1987: 1158; DiCristina, 2015: 135). In Quetelet’s work we find another feature that places him in the realm of positivist criminology –​namely, his deviation from the classical conception of free will. Quetelet did not wholly turn his back on classical notions. He preserved the idea, rooted in the notion of free will, that everyone has ‘some propensity for crime’ (DiCristina, 2015: 135). He was also convinced that society can take measures to reduce crime (Beirne, 1993: 155–​156). At the same time, he argued that the aggregate sum of individual actions is a constant, creating a law-​like outcome. Moreover, based on statistics gathered in the Compte Général, Quetelet asserted that crime could not be attributed to a lack of education, or even of ‘moral instruction’ (Quetelet [1831a] 1984: 37), but was conditioned more by factors such as age and sex, and, to a lesser extent, occupation and religion (Beirne, 1987: 1155, 1158). Guerry, likewise, did not consider education (or lack thereof) a cause of crime, but instead cast blame on material factors such as poverty or class divisions, which he believed encouraged ‘immorality’ and demoralization. Guerry also considered race and physiological features as contributing factors (Beirne, 1993: 124–​125). In this respect, Guerry represents a more common nineteenth-​century type of thought, which has a strong link to degeneration and, as such, to otherness. All in all, moral statistics represents a softer version of the criminology of the other. In this body of work we also find reference to ecological factors rather than uncompromising commitment to biological determinism. Nevertheless, in the final analysis, the offender is categorized and differentiated from the non-​offender. We shall find 55

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this type of softer version of otherness in many of the twentieth-​ century social criminological theories. Biological anthropology, Lombroso, and the Italian positivist school Biological anthropology developed at a time when the premise of social control was once again being undermined, with the abandonment of ideas such as temporary moral insanity, or the notion (as phrenology would have it) that most people have a similar tendency for good. By the late nineteenth century, imprisonment was already the central mode of punishment –​and was already failing as a means to create some sort of deterrence economy, raising new questions about the causes of criminal inclinations and traits. With the growing problem of recidivism, the notion of the habitual criminal offered a better explanation for the penal failure. Thus, the theory of degeneration, with its link to hereditarianism, gained increasing favour (Rafter, 2005: 87). Lombroso himself was an exception in this respect, because he embraced degeneration theory only late in his career; he was initially drawn to theories of atavism (Rafter, 2005). That is, rather than seeing crime as a sign merely of decline or debasement, he perceived it (at least initially) as a reversion to ancestral traits, invariably primitive. Either way, Lombroso was still a pivotal part of the then-​conceptual tradition of ‘medicalized human behavior’ (Gibson et al, 2006: 9), and, of course, in creating knowledge of otherness. Cesare Lombroso (1835–​1909), a physician who began his career as an army surgeon, was intellectually shaped by almost all of the previous founding fathers of positivist criminology mentioned here. His work is defined by its multiple intellectual sources. He was highly influenced by physiognomy and phrenology (Rafter, 2005: 87), but also evolutionary theory and statistics. In the many editions of his magnus opus, Criminal Man, he frequently cites Quetelet and Guerry (Gibson et al, 2006: 8). Based on the idea that criminality might be hidden, Lombroso and his followers took as their mission to make what is invisible, visible; to identify and highlight the otherness of the criminal. Initially, they were convinced that the key to making the invisible visible was the body (Horn, 2003: 37). Indeed, the racialized body was highly appealing to the founders of criminal anthropology, and in general to those interested in making a science of otherness, because ‘the body itself and its differences were visible for all to see’ (Hall, 1997: 244). 56

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‘Scientific racism’ drew on purported biological and ethnological ‘evidence’, based on real or imagined physiological and anatomical differences, especially in cranial characteristics and facial angles, which already were established as explaining mental and physical inferiority (Fredrickson, 1987: 49; Hall, 1997: 243). Scientific racism, of course, relied not only on the supposed binary distinctions between the ‘black’ and ‘white’ races, but also on that between the ‘civilized’ and ‘barbaric’, to assert difference that aligned with superiority and inferiority. One was associated with intellectual development and cultural refinement, the other with raw instinct, oversexuality, and a reliance on custom and ritual (Hall, 1997: 243). Thus, scientific racism did not merely establish a divide between the colony and the metropole. Rather, the idea of the unclean, savage barbarian of the colony –​the colonial other –​became entwined with that of the unwashed urban poor. As Lombroso wrote, ‘Many of the characteristics found in savages, and among the colored races, are also to be found in habitual delinquents’ (quoted in Beirne, 1993: 149); and he argued that, like ‘savages’ (for example, the Aboriginals of Australia or Native Americans), criminals exhibit great insensibility to pain (DiCristina, 2015: 113). Lombroso and his followers relied heavily on scientific racism in reading body anomalies. Lombroso considered these as signs of both atavism and degeneration, and as such, of social danger (Horn, 2003: 15). For him, the criminal was either sick or monstrous (Horn, 2003: 9). This conviction was not only a conclusion based on his research, but also his a priori conception and motivation. We can relate this to Lombroso’s eureka moment, if we can call it that. It came as he examined an anomaly on the skull of Giuseppe Villella, a thief who had died in an asylum in Pavia. As Lombroso put it, ‘This was not merely an idea, but a flash of inspiration. At the sight of that skull, I seemed to see all of a sudden, lighted up as a vast plain under a flaming sky, the problem of the nature of the criminal’ (Garland, 1985b: 111). In that moment, so the story goes, the idea and the proof of the ‘born criminal’ was brought to light. Following Lombroso, one of his principal students, Raffaele Garofalo, asserted that ‘one could be criminal without having committed any crime’ (Horn, 2003: 11). Lombroso’s texts were full of contradictions, inconsistencies, and errors (Horn, 2003: 5). In seeking evidence for his assertions, he drew on an eclectic assortment of sources, from statistical data to psychiatric concepts, phrenology, and even folklore and tattoos (Valverde, 2017a: 336). Valverde argues, based on Lombroso’s eclectic 57

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approach, that he was engaged in what she calls miserology: seeking the origins of crime in an eclectic commingling of ‘the biological and the cultural, the physiological and the moral’ (2017a: 327), with crime arising from a ‘hybrid of moral degradation, physical ill health, spatial marginality, and collective despair’ (2017a: 336). Indeed, Valverde considers Lombroso the ‘last of the miserologists, rather than the first criminologist’ (2017a: 336), and certainly not a ‘biological determinist’ or even practitioner of pseudoscience. I would add that Lombroso was convinced that he could employ his heterogeneous and sometimes dubious methods because he was promoting a higher truth –​an ontological truth about the essence of the criminal. There was no doubt in his mind that the criminal was other, intrinsically different from the law-​abiding population. Lombroso did take his critics seriously, and addressed their critiques in each preface to a new edition of his works. Eventually he partially retracted the idea of the born criminal, offering instead a typology of causes in which hereditary criminals –​those identifiable through physical defects –​comprised only 40 per cent of offenders (Horn, 2003: 16). This idea of a typology would serve positivist criminology for years to come. For example, one of Lombroso’s pivotal successors, Enrico Ferri, identified a number of types alongside the born criminal, including the insane, the habitual criminal, the occasional criminal, and the passionate offender (Jeffery, 1959: 9). For Ferri, like Lombroso, the born criminal was a product not only of atavism, mental retardation, and epilepsy, but also external conditions such as the climate, as well as social factors such as family ties, alcoholism, level of education, and more. All in all, in developing their doctrine, members of the Italian positivist school fashioned their image of the offender based on the ultimate other: the racially inferior, culturally non-​modern colonized other. As Stuart Hall, quoting Richard Dyer, writes, atavism implies a return to or ‘recovery of qualities that have been carried in the blood from generation to generation … it suggests raw, violent, chaotic, and “primitive” emotions’ associated with Africa and blackness (1997: 255). Likewise, Rafter argues that race was ‘integrally woven into Lombroso’s theory of atavism’ (Gibson et al, 2006: 17). Serious offenders were conceived to be more similar to ‘Hottentots and other black-​skinned primitives than to normal white people, with their well-​evolved moral sense’ (Rafter, 2011: 151). Indeed, the born criminal was considered to bear traits not only of primitive people, but even of animals and plants (Rafter, 2011). 58

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In many respects, then, the colonial other served as a blueprint for the concept of otherness, and the management of those considered inferior and potentially dangerous. Indeed, in its early days, positivist criminology, or criminal (biological) anthropology as it was commonly referred to, was driven by imperialist reasoning (Agozino, 2003: 33) and colonial imagery. Yet it is important to remember that foreigners were not the first class of people to be racialized in the penal discourse (Agozino, 2000: 361). Lower-​class British citizens were also identified in the nineteenth century as a blight on the white race, and were regarded, even before Lombroso’s atavistic conception, as degenerate compared to the master race (Garland, 1985b). For the Italian positivist school, a key link between the colonial other and the delinquent other was the population of today’s southern Italy. The Italian ‘Southern Question’ –​that is, the disjunction between Italy’s prosperous, industrialized north and the economic, social, and cultural underdevelopment that characterized the south –​was particularly present in the collective consciousness of the Italian positivists, and heavily informed the body of work they produced. The positivists could see no better reason for the south’s failure to prosper than some defect in its population, a primitiveness that linked southern Italians with the non-​white races and, above all, with prehistoric men (Beirne, 1993: 148). In the United States, immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, along with, of course, African-​Americans, were also seen through this prism.

The premise of otherness The Italian school, and the positivist school in general, were embraced relatively quickly by social elites. Indeed, criminal anthropology arrived at a time when policy makers were finding it prudent to rethink the fundamentals of criminal jurisprudence (Rafter, 2005: 79). The emerging social effects of the Industrial Revolution and the rapid urbanization that followed in the last third of the nineteenth century put huge pressure on the penal system in Europe. Urban poverty and crime became prominent social problems which carceral institutions had to respond to. More and more social leaders and opinion shapers came to the conclusion that the classical penal model had failed to deter and normalize the ‘dangerous classes’ (Beirne, 1987: 1146), and that the system was in dire need of reform. The criminology of the other, which perceived offenders as suffering from some type of 59

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individual pathology, offered an explanation for this penal failure. Clearly, the born criminal –​or, taking a less deterministic perspective, the degenerate offender –​would not respond to existing methods of deterrence, and continuing with the classical penal framework would only result in more recidivism. Positivist criminology, as we know, challenged the free-​will doctrine of the classical school and offered an alternative penological logic. Its determinism, even in its softer version, assumes some type of mitigating factor that reduces the culpability of the offender. Certainly, this was the case in the early days of positivist criminology, when it was presumed that the cause of criminality was some form of degeneration or atavism. In this context, the nexus between penal responsibility and punishment or a deterrence economy made little sense, and new penological directions were called for. Criminological knowledge in the early days of positivist criminology thus led to a new penological path. This direction pushed policy makers to abandon the classical judicial notion of criminal responsibility and, instead, called for either some type of treatment (for example, re-​ education, resocialization, rehabilitation), or prevention, in the form of exclusion. The latter could be realized only through draconian measures as part of population management. Thus, we find both progressive and regressive elements in early positivist penology, which at times commingled (as we shall see further in the next chapter). Positivist penology thus stems from the logic of otherness; the criminal is an other who must be either reformed, or separated from honest society. As a result, dangerousness becomes central in determining how the criminal system should treat offenders. As Lombroso asserted, the severity of treatment should be proportional not to the offence, but to the dangerousness of the offender –​that is, the offender’s potential to harm in the future (Gibson et al, 2006: 2). Progressive jurists and penal authorities soon began to support the doctrine of criminal anthropology. The knowledge introduced by the criminal anthropologists not only offered symbolic power, being rooted in science, but suited the needs and objectives of these professionals (Nye, 1976: 336). I would add that it also, or even mostly, suited the objectives of the political elites and the bourgeoisie in general, who had an interest in controlling the lower classes (Jenkins, 1984). Such knowledge allowed them to bridge between bourgeois Enlightenment ideals and the cruel social reality. It provided much-​ needed confirmation that the system was just, and that they –​the 60

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bourgeoisie and the social order they presided over –​ were not responsible for the fates of those at the losing end. Keep in mind, too, that as the nineteenth century progressed, working-​class men in Western Europe and the US became gradually enfranchised and could potentially work via political channels to implement social reforms. Maintaining and preserving the social structure thus required knowledge that would legitimize the rule of some over others. Positivist criminology, at that time, was part of a greater body of knowledge of otherness. It supported the will to separate and control populations. Here, again, it is helpful to look at colonial history to understand the dynamics at play in the metropole. From colonial domination and expropriation, we learn how the spread of liberalism went hand in hand with our modern notions of race and racism (Gibson et al, 2006). With notions of biological inferiority or personality disorder, the foundation for degeneration theories, one could explain why certain populations were excluded from sharing power. As Uday Singh Mehta reminds us, ‘the program of making people even formally equal, is always (i.e., historically) implicitly bounded’ (1999: 16). As such, knowledge that supported the idea of socio-​political exclusion was in high demand. A medicalized discourse of pathology created the necessary distance, allowed the elites to avoid taking responsibility for poor social conditions, and, most important, justified the apparatus of control over these ‘others’ in order to secure the socio-​political and economic structure. As a final word, we can note that the process of administering populations is never neutral. The birth of positivist criminology was driven by a certain elite ideology, and also informed and fed that ideology. Most nineteenth-​century criminologists, as part of the educated classes, shared the tenets of scientific racism, according to which the lower classes, at least those who posed a threat to social stability, were constitutionally different, and possibly even less evolved. Such notions led to evolutionary explanations for criminal behaviour, notably phrenology, biological anthropology, and degeneration theories in general (Rafter, 2011). The main objective was the classification of ‘degenerate’ types among whom not only crime, but also idiocy, epilepsy, alcoholism, and insanity were likely to be found. All of these pathologies informed the otherness of this population, and legitimized the modes of control used to govern them, including reforms, moralistic campaigns, ‘child-​saving’ institutions (Jenkins, 1984), and even eugenics. 61

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The American philanthropist Charles Loring Brace, writing toward the end of the nineteenth century, averred that ‘the cheapest and most efficacious way of dealing with the “Dangerous Classes” of large cities, is not to punish them, but to prevent their growth’ (1880: i–​ii). We shall see how positivist criminology continued to produce knowledge that supported such policies in the next chapter.

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Two Versions of Otherness: Between Eugenics and Modernization Theory The previous chapter ended with a quotation by Charles Loring Brace from 1880, in which he affirmed that the best way to govern the ‘dangerous classes’ was ‘not to punish them, but to prevent their growth’ (1880: i–​ii). This was the logical conclusion based on deterministic arguments that prevailed in the early stages of positivist criminology, as informed by conceptions of degeneration and atavism. ‘Preventing the growth’ of dangerous others clearly alludes to eugenic policies, which, as we shall see, were extremely pervasive in the period covered in this chapter. But if we continue to read Brace’s argument, we find that he also points to an additional strategy –​that of socializing, reforming, educating, and generally bettering the underdeveloped portion of the citizenry through moralistic campaigns: To so throw the influence of education and discipline and religion about the abandoned and destitute youth of our large towns; to so change their material circumstances, and draw them under the influence of the moral and fortunate classes, that they shall grow up as useful producers and members of society, able and inclined to aid it and its progress. (Brace, 1880: ii) Such policies, to be sure, were also common and indicative of the era. I refer to this disciplinary and reformative logic as modernization theory. It is between these two logics, eugenics and modernization, that this chapter travels. In terms of wider history, we are now in what

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is known as the Progressive Era –​the period from roughly 1890 to 1930, which was considered an era of reform, particularly in the United States. In criminological texts, this period is often divided into two, represented by their leading schools of thought: first the neo-​Lombrosian era, defined by multifactor explanations of crime, and then the Chicago School, which argued for social causes of delinquency, starting with social ecology theory. As we shall see, there are major differences between the neo-​Lombrosian and Chicago School paradigms. Yet these two schools of thought share the fundamental premises of positivist criminology: the ‘otherness’ of the offender, based on some form of pathology, and therefore the need for specialized knowledge to control and manage this population. Edward Said’s description of the system of knowledge which undergirds the Orient as other (1979: 124) can be applied just as well to this body of knowledge, as knowledge that legitimizes authority for and over the other. It is for the other to the degree that it paternalistically regards the other –​the immigrant, the sick, the weak, the poor, the mentally ill, and the criminal –​as the responsibility of society (Newman and Marongiu, 1990: 327). It is over the other to the degree that it regards those unable to be assimilated into modern society –​those too mentally deficient or degenerate to be helped into productive work and contented family life –​as requiring containment, exclusion, and eugenic control. These two modes of control –​care and containment, authority for and over the other –​are not mutually exclusive. In this respect, one must understand the commingled role of welfarist reform and the eugenic movement during the Progressive Era (Jenkins, 1984: 64). This era of reform was characterized by an expansion of public and private programmes, administrated by professionals, designed to manage populations in need –​often considered a threatening social group including criminals (thieves, murderers), prostitutes, drunkards, paupers, the feeble-​minded, and individuals with diseases such as syphilis or epilepsy (Jenkins, 1984). Some of these efforts, particularly those directed at the younger population, were aimed at reform and rehabilitation, and were a direct extension of programmes already introduced in the second half of the nineteenth century (for example, ‘child-​saving’ institutions and moralistic campaigns). But some people were perceived as not susceptible to reform, and as needing to be controlled through lifetime detention or sterilization, following a negative eugenic1 logic (see Jenkins, 1982). 64

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Indeed, in 1915, as in 1865, social and political elites embraced the idea of degeneration and heredity as causes of social unrest; but twentieth-​century reformist thinkers, including supporters of eugenics, were inclined to discard the laissez-f​ aire politics of the earlier nineteenth-​century social Darwinists and Malthusians2 (Sumner, 1994: 35). For them, degeneracy necessitated state intervention. Active involvement by the state, they believed, was the only path toward ‘the reproduction of a healthy population’ (Sumner, 1994: 35). These were the progressives, and this creed was the new social Darwinism. Positivist criminology and penology were part of this movement. The progressive movement advocated interventions to offer social relief from the misery and resentment seen among the poor; and it aimed for these programmes to be administered with efficiency, professionalism, and technocratic expertise (Jenkins, 1982: 351). Positivist criminology also called for informed justice and penal responses that would remedy the pathologies of those who entered the system. At the same time, the idea of reform also pertained to the logic of preventive exclusion. If the criminal pathology was due to a defective character that could be reformed, or a disease that could be cured, then that should be done. But if the condition were so deeply embedded that it could not be remedied, then the individual had to be kept in permanent detention for the protection of decent society, and prevented from passing on pathological defects and moral degradation to future generations. Indeed, under the medical or rehabilitative model of positivist criminology of this era, punishment in the classical form made little sense. If criminal tendencies were based on some pathology, and could even be inborn, the penal response had to be flexible, tailored to the condition of the individual –​either care and rehabilitation, or protective separation and reproductive control. This chapter reviews the history of positivist criminology in the early decades of the twentieth century, a moment at which Lombroso’s work had already been challenged. It considers the development of positivist criminology by asking whether and how this era of knowledge production represents a break with the legacy of the Italian positivist school. Chiefly, the chapter raises the possibility that even with multifactorial or social ecological explanations for crime and delinquency, the core of positivist criminology –​the criminology of the other –​remains unchallenged. 65

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Charles Goring and neo-​Lombrosianism The canonical text that symbolizes the beginning of the era covered in this chapter, the work that came to symbolize the transition into a post-​Lombrosian era, is Charles Goring’s The English Convict (1913). In the popular historical imagination, Goring is often treated primarily as having played a pivotal role in refuting the Lombrosian theory. It is pointed out that Goring’s more carefully controlled statistical comparison based on 3,000 offenders and non-​offenders found no significant physical differences between the two populations, discrediting Lombroso’s idea of the born criminal. Indeed, Goring showed that Lombroso’s studies were methodologically unsound (Lanier et al, 2018: 100). It is also agreed, however, that Goring did not alter the basic objectives of positivist criminology, which continued to focus on the criminal and his pathologies. A more revisionist historical conception (Nye, 1976; Beirne, 1993) puts much more weight on the continuity between Lombroso and Goring. Piers Beirne (1993: 8), for instance, argues that ‘The English Convict should not be considered a paradigmatic shift from Lombrosianism. In refuting certain aspects of the notion of the born criminal, while lending support to others, The English Convict advanced an ambiguous argument about Homo criminalis not in opposition to Lombrosianism, but in parallel to it’. As Beirne writes, even at the time The English Convict was published, at least one practitioner, the prison commissioner Ruggles-​Brise, understood that Goring’s findings were not a progressive advance on Lombrosian theory, but a parallel movement in the same direction (1993: 213). As such, Goring actually represents a neo-​(as opposed to post-​) Lombrosian era. Indeed, by the time Goring wrote his potent critique of Lombroso’s theory, he was actually addressing a body of work from which Lombroso himself, and his successors in the Italian positivist school, had already distanced themselves (Beirne, 1993: 211–​212). If we remember, Ferri, for example, offered a multifactorial typology for the causes of crime: anthropological (biological and psychological), telluric or physical (natural resources and climate), and social (economic, political, and cultural conditions) (DiCristina, 2015: 77). Moreover, Goring was hardly the first to dispute Lombroso’s work. In fact, several decades before the appearance of The English Convict, in the 1880s, members of the French environmental school had strongly criticized Lombroso’s and his followers’ theoretical propositions and conclusions, advancing 66

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both methodological and empirical critiques (DiCristina, 2015; see also Nye 1976). Lombroso actually took these critiques to heart and addressed them in his prefaces to new editions of Criminal Man (see the previous chapter). Notably, Goring, in The English Convict, challenges both the Italian positivist school (biological anthropology) and the French environmental school (Beirne, 1993: 188). He considered both schools to be flawed, as based not on sound statistical facts but on metaphysical assumptions (Beirne, 1993: 208). Goring insisted that his own observations were grounded in sound statistical analysis. From this position he challenged the idea that offenders are different from non-​offenders in kind. For him, the ‘otherness’ of the offender is only in degree (Beirne, 1993: 200). Yet it is undeniably questionable whether Goring put forward a profound alternative to Lombrosian otherness. As we have seen, Lombroso’s successors in the Italian positivist school saw Goring as actually complementing their own ideas (for example, Beirne, 1993: 195). Gina Lombroso-​Ferrero, Lombroso’s daughter (and the person responsible for making some of his writing available in English), argued that Goring was as Lombrosian as Lombroso, because Goring was as deterministic as her father. The only difference, as she saw it, was that Goring’s determinism was based on psychological factors as opposed to biological ones (Gibson et al, 2006: 29). Indeed, both Goring and Lombroso were loyal to the tradition of medical–​biological discourse that had developed early in the nineteenth century, and which, around the 1850s, manifested as degeneration theories (Nye, 1993: 688). Biological or medical discourse, if we remember, became a useful way for thinking about problems such as poverty, the conditions of the working classes, and crime (Nye, 1993). At heart, this mode of thinking asserted –​one might argue rather conveniently –​that such social problems are caused by the pathological individual, and not vice versa. More bluntly, both Lombroso’s and Goring’s work supported and corresponded with what was presented at the time as a new science: eugenics. Eugenics was defined as the science of ‘race betterment’ or ‘stock improvement’.3 In its origins, eugenic science was closely linked to Victorian criminology. Crime, pauperism, and deficiency, it was believed, were the result of heredity (Jenkins, 1984: 66). This conception led researchers to study ‘degenerate’ families in which crime, idiocy, epilepsy, alcoholism, insanity, and so on were likely to be found (Jenkins, 1984). In this respect, Richard 67

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Louis Dugdale’s work The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity (1877), focusing on members of an extended family in rural New York, was a classic eugenic case study which aimed to show how degenerate traits were passed on through the generations (Jenkins, 1984: 66). Eugenics thus essentially took the theories that arose between 1830 and 1870 about the connection between crime and defective physical and mental states, and synthesized these ideas with reference to policy.

Criminological knowledge and eugenics The founding father of eugenics as a science was Francis Galton, a British polymath with interests in sociology, psychology, anthropology, geography, meteorology, statistics, and more. As Jonathan Simon (2020: 6) puts it, Galton chose the term eugenics ‘to describe the new, “hard” science of racial improvement that he deduced from Darwin’s theory of evolution and Mendelian principles4 of hereditary selection (which suggested that traits could only be inherited and not changed)’. While it is clear that Galton was not the first person to aspire to a racially controlled society, he was the first to actively and deliberately seek to establish such a social programme on the basis of a new science. Francis Galton published the foundational text of the eugenics movement, Hereditary Genius, in 1869 –​ some years before the appearance of Lombroso’s Criminal Man (1876).5 By the turn of the century, Galton felt able to proclaim that he had developed a science which could identify the fittest human beings and produce a superior race through proper breeding and sterilization (Morris, 2017: 18). Extending the reasoning of Darwin and Mendel, Galton asserted that traits such as mental illness, ‘feeble mindedness’, or ‘pauperism’ were like the physical traits of plants or animals in that they could only be inherited, and not altered (Jenkins, 1984: 65–6​ 6; Simon, 2020: 6). His objective was to reduce, and even prevent, the influence on society of people carrying these traits by limiting their ability to pass them on to future generations (Jenkins, 1984). This agenda has been defined as negative eugenics. At the same time, he also promoted positive eugenics –​an effort to preserve and increase the presence in society of high-​quality traits by encouraging procreation among the talented and successful (Nye, 1993: 695). Together, it was hoped that negative and positive eugenics would improve the population by reducing the relative proportion of its undesirable elements. 68

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Overall, eugenics fitted well with the broader progressive movement, which aimed to use science to improve people’s economic and social condition (Simon, 2020: 6).6 As a result, at the turn of the twentieth century, we find a plethora of eugenic societies and journals, particularly in Britain and the US. These institutions campaigned for policies to prevent the procreation of ‘degenerate’ racial types (Jenkins, 1984: 69). In 1907, in Britain, Galton and a young social reformer, Sybil Gotto, founded the Eugenics Educational Society (later renamed the Eugenics Society, and eventually rebranded as the Galton Institute). Around the same time, a eugenics research arm, the Francis Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics, was established at University College London. Charles Goring was a prominent member of the Eugenics Educational Society and also worked at the Galton Laboratory, where he applied the tools of evolutionary and mathematical zoology to the goal of improving the human stock (Beirne, 1993: 198). In fact, members of the British eugenics movement took The English Convict to be a supporting text, as it offered strong evidence that criminality was inherited. Eugenics won the support of social, cultural, scientific, and political elites in both Britain and the US (Nye, 1993: 699, 700). Among them we can list Theodore Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr, all of whom were outspoken proponents. Eugenics was taught in schools and promoted in exhibits at national and international expositions, even as late as the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1933–​1934 (DenHoed, 2016: 3). Eugenic thought was also translated into social policy. This meant, first, controlling immigration. For example, the biologist Harry Laughlin, director of the Eugenics Record Office at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, was a key driving force behind the Immigration Act of 1924, which set strict quotas on ‘undesirable races’ (including Jews), and prohibited immigration from Asia entirely (Mazumdar, 2002: 49). More chillingly, it also was used to justify the sterilization of people thought to be carriers of undesirable genetic traits. In Britain, a 1912 report by the Committee to Consider the Eugenic Aspect of Poor Law Reform stated that [the defective] affords the chief burden on the public purse. He is not the man who responds to a call upon manly independence or stands ready to take a place made available through the labour exchange … He does not respond because there is nothing in 69

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him to respond. His mainspring came into the world broken. His reproductive instinct however remains intact. (quoted in Mazumdar, 2002)7 Terrifyingly to the elites, those who received public relief under the Poor Law were also considered to be particularly fecund (Mazumdar, 2002: 48). The British response to the question of how to manage this dangerous and rapidly reproducing population only led to campaigns for voluntary sterilization (Macnicol, 1992). In the US, however, such notions gave rise to laws allowing forced sterilization. Starting in 1897, 32 states passed sterilization laws, and the procedure was performed on 60 to 70,000 people (DenHoed, 2016: 5). In Canada too, sterilization laws were promulgated in two provinces (Sumner, 1994: 36). Such policies persisted even after the mid-​1930s, by which time eugenics was generally considered flawed science and most geneticists accepted that sterilization could not purge society of its undesirables (Mazumdar, 2002: 48). In some places they continued well into the 1960s and even 1970s (Mazumdar, 2002: 51). Eugenics also continued to inform criminological knowledge production. Earnest A. Hooton, the American physical anthropologist who made Harvard a centre for the field, attempted in the 1930s to revive eugenic criminology (Rafter, 2005: 88; Lanier et al, 2018: 102–​ 103). In the 1950s –​even after the Second World War and the Holocaust –​the Harvard criminologists Sheldon and Elinor Glueck continued, in their studies on delinquency (1956), to assert that body type was one of the factors contributing to crime (Lanier et al, 2018). Indeed, historical introspection demonstrates that, despite an ideological and cultural shift, biologically deterministic thought and research did not end in 1945, and a modified eugenics framework was subsumed into the logic and practices of the modern welfare state, and, particularly, into the thinking and practices of the criminal justice system (Nye, 1993: 687; Simon, 2020: 3). The influence of eugenics remained present and available through newer scientific channels (Simon, 2020: 3), particularly evolutionary psychology and behavioural genetics (Gibson et al, 2006: 29). These new disciplines kept the door open for the claim that one’s future behaviour is determined by inherited traits, and that punishment, as per the positivist dogma, should fit the offender and not the crime (Simon, 2020: 2, 5). Eugenic principles, in new guise, were thus used to support a push for longer periods of incarceration, on the grounds that 70

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some offenders are beyond reform. As late as the mid-​1960s, penal policies and practices in the US were still working to isolate ‘defective delinquents’ and thus employing the medical and discretionary model (Jenkins, 1984: 75). The reach and impact of eugenic thought was not confined to biological or psychological theories of crime. In fact, we can find traces of eugenics in sociological theories, particularly in the early tradition of Anglo-​Saxon sociology, and even in the hallmark of American sociology, the Chicago School. This is partly because of the influence of biological thought in early sociological scholarship (social ecology in the case of the Chicago School). In particular, early American sociology was dominated by evolutionary naturalism –​a theoretical orientation which held that social phenomena (that is, social structures and dynamics) originate in struggles for human survival (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 20, 21). This theory was clearly indebted to and dependent upon Darwinian ideas, and was influenced as well by the work of Herbert Spencer, the prominent British scholar, who asserted that the human races were organized in a natural hierarchy (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 20). Early Anglo-​Saxon sociology, we should remember, emerged at a time when belief in innate inequality between the races was strongly prevalent. Such convictions, apparently supported by what were then cutting-​edge developments in the natural sciences (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 36), informed the knowledge produced by the sociologists of the time, which served in turn as justification for social policies. This community of sociologists (and many intellectuals in general) believed that the social dynamics of their time were natural and, indeed, a sign of progress. Thus, phenomena such as industrialization, urbanization, and massive immigration were all taken as signs of healthy social processes reflecting natural selection between human groups (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 21). As such, this line of thought informed how interactions between different social groups were interpreted. For example, Franklin Giddings (1855–​1931), the first full-​time professor of sociology at Columbia University –​and considered a ‘progressive’ (as opposed to hardcore) Darwinist (Saint-​ Arnaud, 2009: 37) –​commented that ‘when higher and lower races come in contact, it is necessary for the higher in many ways to sustain the lower; otherwise it would be impossible for two very different races to live together’ (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 28). Against this backdrop, it is easy to see how many of the founders of American sociology were attracted to eugenics. Indeed, this 71

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was in a sense a co-​constitutive dynamic. Evolutionary naturalism provided the eugenic movement with ‘scientific’ evidence bolstering its opposition to immigration and its support for sterilization of the ‘unfit’ (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 37). Meanwhile, an early volume of the American Journal of Sociology printed a major article by Galton outlining his theory, titled ‘Eugenics: its definition, scope, and aims’ (Galton, 1904; see also, Morris, 2017: 19).8 Early American sociology thus gave its imprimatur to programmes aimed at securing the supremacy of one population over others, such as the immigration quotas and sterilization programmes discussed earlier.

The Chicago School and modernization theory As we have seen, many of the early American sociologists supported the growing nativist movement (or Americanization movement) in the US, and its belief that members of certain ethnic and racial groups possessed low intelligence, were prone to crime, and were generally unfit for modern democratic life (Wiley, 2011: 39–​40). Alongside this was a perception that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe –​and, after 1914, African-​Americans migrating northward from the rural South –​had created an urban social crisis that could only be combated through programmes to control the fertility of undesirable populations (Simon, 2020: 6–​7). The sociology department at the University of Chicago (the ‘Chicago School’) –​arguably the leading producer of sociological knowledge during the Progressive Era –​seems, at first glance, to buck this trend. At least some founding members of the Chicago School took a firm position against the nativist movement, disavowing the widely held view that some ethnic and racial groups are evidently different from and inferior to others. Rather, they advanced the idea that all people are ontologically the same, bearing the same moral capacity –​and therefore should be legally equal (Wiley, 2011: 39–​40). In this, these scholars were strongly influenced by the work of George Herbert Mead (a fellow Chicagoan) and of anthropologist Franz Boas, who challenged biological determinism as an explanation for the differing statuses of racial and ethnic groups (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 38; Wiley, 2011: 39, 60). In this respect, William Thomas and Florian Znaniecki’s canonical book The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918–​1920) was a response to the nativist movement and its extreme anti-​immigrant 72

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sentiment (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 41; Chapoulie, 2020: 139). This counter-​intellectual movement continued with Ellsworth Faris, who succeeded Thomas in Chicago’s Department of Sociology and chaired it from 1925. Members of the Chicago School, and especially those in the cohort which followed the founding generation, called for efforts to professionalize sociology, by which they meant separating sociology from social reform. Robert Park (1864–​1944), the most influential figure of the second generation, actively warned his students against ‘do-​gooderism’, and encouraged them to take a detached and distanced approach toward social problems (see Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 53). As he put it, sociological work should move from ‘advocacy’ to scientific ‘objectivity’ (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 46; Zimmerman, 2012: 231; Chapoulie, 2020: 4). In this quest to establish sociology as a science, the Chicago School positioned the study of sociology as a distinctly urban discipline (Zimmerman, 2012: 227), introducing community-​based social surveys and ethnographic neighbourhood studies (O’Connor, 2009: 3). All of these developments seemed to carry the Chicago School away from both progressive reform in general, and eugenic policies in particular. Yet closer inspection suggests that Chicago School’s scholars were still influenced by medical and biological explanations for social phenomena, and even accepted key elements of eugenic thought. Robert Nye, in particular, has argued that biomedical presumptions are clearly visible in the ecological interpretations of urban growth produced by the Chicago School (1985a: 660).9 The main problem which occupied the attention of the Chicago scholars during the period from 1910 to 1939 was that of individual socialization and personality development (Jeffery, 1959: 7). Though they sought to address this problem scientifically, traces of biological and even eugenic thought influenced their questions, interpretations, and suggested solutions. For example, Ellsworth Faris (who, as noted, was the second chairman of the Chicago sociology department) generally accepted Boas’s theory that, on average, a ‘primitive’ child had the same capacities as a ‘civilized’ child. Yet Faris also exhibited ‘a penchant for cross-​racial correlations of brain weight with intellectual aptitude’ (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 43). Likewise, while Thomas and Znaniecki’s The Polish Peasant explicitly rejected nativism, Thomas himself never fully disavowed heredity as a contributing factor in the capabilities of different racial groups (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 39). 73

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The body of work produced by scholars of the Chicago School managed to conceal the racially laden element of social ecological theory through a notion that the problems they were studying were part of a natural evolutionary process (O’Connor, 2009: 49). Their research was a hybrid enterprise that still relied on some ‘natural laws’ (Morris, 2017: 112), but also maintained that improvement could come through cultural development, via exposure to and interaction with healthy social groups. Essentially, their approach reflected a more nuanced social Darwinism ‘that combined evolutionary principles with social interaction analysis’ (Morris, 2017: 112). More simply, while their analysis of less successful groups started from an assumption of otherness and profound inferiority, it was not fully deterministic; rather, they believed that the social position of such groups was conditioned by historical and cultural processes. For example, even if they accepted the biological inferiority of African-​Americans as fact, they were open to assimilation as a means of improving their status, ‘help[ing] along the “natural” process predicted by evolutionary theory’ (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 37). This approach, in turn, advanced a cultural understanding of delinquency, and particularly juvenile delinquency; one which (as we shall see in the next chapter) played a key role in disorganization theory, learning theory, and subculture theory (O’Connor, 2009: 51). What we find here, therefore, is a different sensitivity toward otherness that called for a different set of tools to deal with social problems. In other words, the Chicago School produced new knowledge that pointed toward new policies for dealing with the other. I term this type of knowledge modernization theory. I am using this term very narrowly,10 to mean knowledge based on the assumption that through a proper process of acculturation and education, ‘primitives’ could be ‘modernized’ (Ram, 2012: 41). As discussed in Chapter 3, the otherness of the urban poor stems in many respects from the ultimate other, the colonial other. As such, modernization theory is built on the idea of the ‘White Man’s Burden’ toward the colonial other. The colonial mission, as advertised, was a mission of civilization. ‘Souls must be saved. Territories must be reclaimed. Peoples must be civilized’ (Melossi, 2022). The urban poor, too, like the colonized natives, must be saved and modernized. Such an endeavour, as Foucault and Said tell us, demands a new kind of knowledge (Hall, 1997: 261) –​ knowledge that the Chicago School introduced, and then inspired in later generations of scholars. 74

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In this respect, Robert Park and Ernest W. Burgess’s then-​ monumental work, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, first published in 1921, formulated the discipline as aimed at studying the interaction between social groups, rather than on society as such (Zimmerman, 2012: 226–​227). As noted, following the German-​born anthropologist Franz Boas, it was assumed that what sets social groups apart was not biology, but their subcultures, and that social groups are receptive to positive change and development if driven by the right forces and exemplars (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 38; Wiley, 2011: 39). Thus, the Chicago School’s formulation of the discipline informed their assertion that racial or ethnic groups, while differing fundamentally from one another, could and should be integrated, because inferior social groups would then benefit from their interaction with more advanced groups. Park, who together with Burgess made the sociology department at the University of Chicago the leading department of its day (O’Connor, 2001: 47–​48), was an outspoken proponent of modernization theory. Before joining the University of Chicago, Park was a journalist and a press agent for Booker T. Washington at the Tuskegee Institute, a school known at the time for its commitment to improving the lives of African-​Americans after emancipation through the teaching of practical skill and self-​reliance. In his work, Park combined the German and southern traditions of sociological thought (see Saint-​ Arnaud, 2009: 55; Zimmerman, 2012: 219–2​ 20; Chapoulie, 2020: 7). Influenced by this body of work, and by the Chicago School’s pathbreaking studies of urban ethnography (particularly Thomas and Znaniecki’s The Polish Peasant) (O’Connor, 2001: 45; Chapoulie, 2020: 8), Park asserted that ‘peoples of mixed race are the rule and not the exception’ (1928: 890), and that ‘the question of alleged black intellectual inferiority “remains where Boas left it when he said that the black man was little, if any, inferior to the white man in intellectual capacity and, in any case, racial as compared with individual differences were small and relatively unimportant” ’ (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 61). For Park, therefore, relations between the races were a given. He also maintained that members of any social group were capable of development and modernization, at least with time. These assumptions focused his attention toward the process of assimilation. Of course, it is hardly true to state that Park was totally devoid of racial bias. As a man of his time, he still carried a biologistic concept of ‘racial temperament’ (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 61). As he himself stated, ‘The 75

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Negro is, by natural disposition, neither an intellectual nor an idealist, like the Jew; nor a brooding introspective, like the East African; nor a pioneer and frontiersman, like the Anglo-​Saxon. He is primarily an artist, loving life for its own sake’ (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 61; Park, 1918: 280). But this did not reduce his adherence to the promise of assimilation, whereby interaction with an advanced social group would yield with time an improvement and development of the degenerate social group (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 56). Park, and also Burgess, saw assimilation as the final stage of a longer process, where racial conflicts are first resolved through accommodation –​a stage wherein members of different racial groups coexist, but with one group dominating and controlling the other. Initially, they admit, this dominance can mean subordination, exploitation, and even enslavement, but in time it should lead to assimilation –​cultural and even physical fusion between the races (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 63; Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 1921: 735–​737). I would argue that this notion of accommodation, which I consider to be an articulation of modernization theory, served as the foundation for subsequent social theories in criminology. That is, this was the prism through which subsequent criminological theories addressed the positivist question of why people offend and how to deal with them. Modernization theory signifies a transformation in criminological knowledge. The Chicago School, as we know, with its sociological and environmental (that is, ecological) approach, marked a transition from biologistic theories and from personal and psychological factors to more social explanations for crime. Still, it retained a positivist–​ aetiological approach to the causes of crime, in which explanations for crime continued to be based on some form of pathology, now external to the human body or personality. Modernization theory is part of this transition, but more particularly relates to the soft determinism entailed by the sociological approach. This is the essence of the break with the neo-​Lombrosian era. If we remember, Lombroso’s followers accused Goring of being as deterministic as they were. Criminological knowledge à la the Chicago School, adhering to modernization theory, was a major conceptual break in this respect –​and one with major policy implications. This is because it asserted an ability to effect change: to prevent crime by reforming and bettering individuals prone to delinquency. Park was influential in popularizing and disseminating the conviction, rooted in the sociology of the Chicago School, that it was possible to 76

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effect change through social engineering. Park was deeply committed to accommodation and even saw merit in its oppressive phases, including slavery. Park –​and it is reasonable to assume that he was trying to be value-​free (though this does not lessen the offensiveness of these remarks) –​wrote that ‘slavery had rapidly instilled in blacks the customs, family patterns, and “civilization” of their masters’ (‘Racial Assimilation’, quoted in Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 58). For him, indeed, domestic slavery served as evidence that African-​Americans had the ability to culturally develop and embrace white middle-​ class behaviour (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 62). Park even argued that emancipation, and the segregation that followed, were detrimental to the process of accommodation (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 57). At any rate, he was convinced by the ‘process by which the Negro was making and has made his slow but steady advance’ (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 56; Park, 1950: vii–​viii). To ensure this ‘steady advance’, Park advised that African-​Americans should remain in the rural South, ‘where they can grow up slowly and naturally, and be kept out of the cities where they will be forced along at a pace that will make them superficial and trifling’; this being done, ‘the race problem will eventually solve itself ’ (Zimmerman, 2012: 220). Park applied the logic of this slow evolutionary process of accommodation not just to African-​Americans but to other ‘non-​whites’ (particularly Asians) living in the US. Again, adopting at least the vocabulary of evolutionary theory, and using a biological analogy, he saw this as a process of maturation by which outsiders are slowly incorporated and made part of the community (Saint-​Arnaud, 2009: 57). In many respects, the Chicago School and modernization theory laid the conceptual and ideological foundation of future criminological knowledge. Indeed, one might say that modernization theory defined mainstream Western criminology during the second third of the twentieth century, in which knowledge production started from a position of otherness (that is, the existence of the criminal other), but saw these others as people who could (with the right knowledge and understanding) be helped and changed, as opposed to merely controlled. First, the Chicago School formulated the sociological imagination which inspired the production of later criminological knowledge. Drawing its vocabulary from biology while emphasizing the physical (urban) environment, it used the prism of evolutionary processes to shape a culturally based social theory. We find this influence in Clifford Shaw and Henry 77

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D. McKay’s social disorganization theory, discussed below,11 and even in Edwin Sutherland’s differential association theory, which will be discussed in the next chapter. Second, the evolutionary paradigm in modernization theory and the belief in the possibility of social and cultural development led to a prominent tradition of advocacy in criminological scholarship (for interventions, youth programmes, care-​oriented penology, urban renewal, and so on). If we focus, for a moment, on social disorganization theory, we can see how modernization theory influenced its formulation. The notion of cultural degeneracy helped shape the explanations proposed for the social unrest that researchers observed in the immigrant neighbourhoods of Chicago. Following this conceptualization, it was understood that the immigrants’ circumstances were the outcome of their transition from backward rural areas to a more culturally modern urbanized life (O’Connor, 2009: 46). Of course, as C. Wright Mills tells us, this assumption had to be based on some normative conception of a ‘correct’ historical evolutionary process, which was attached to a specific social group –​a healthy group that, according to this biased perspective, had completed its evolution to modernization (1943: 174). The immigrants, according to this view, were still in a native phase, and needed to be modernized before they could effectively integrate into modern society. To use Mills’ terminology once more, this ‘cultural lag’ was their pathology (1943: 176). Conveniently, it was this insufficient evolutionary process12 that was at fault, and not any structural conditions or behaviour of the social elite. It was thus defined as an ‘immigrant problem’, similar to the ‘Negro problem’, which stemmed from their maladjustment to the healthy modern society represented by the morally superior (or ‘organized’ in sociological terms) Anglo-​Saxon group. Notice also that this argument has biological terminology at its heart: maladaptation to the environment (Mills, 1943: 179, 180). What followed was the idea that socially disorganized areas were criminogenic (Sumner, 1994: 46). This disorganization, along with the ecological stresses of the city (the urban metabolism: invasion, competition, succession, and so on), led to the establishment and spread of delinquent values13 (Sumner, 1994). However, while the inhabitants of immigrant neighbourhoods were thought to be in a sort of cultural–​historical atavism, meaning an earlier culturally evolutionary stage, unlike the case with biological atavism this condition could be changed (as argued by modernization theory). 78

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Thus, what also followed was the charitable (and paternalistic) endeavour to help the culturally degenerate to modernize.

Between eugenics and modernization theory The early days of positivist criminology, up to and including the neo-​Lombrosian era, were by and large marked by the dominance of degeneration theories, in which the inferior other was set off by biological ‘difference’, often considered to be fixed –​that is, not subject to change –​and innate. Under these theories, ‘primitivism’ (culture) and ‘race’ (nature) became interchangeable. This conception was both the point of entry (the understanding which guided any criminological research or investigation) and the conclusion which informed policy. These theories were based on knowledge produced by the leading men of science at the time; that is, men with symbolic capital. These ideas went hand in hand with eugenic thought and practice. If degenerative traits are both fixed and heritable –​a notion supported by the established science of the day –​then the logical mode of action is to prevent, or at least minimize, their transmission. Hence, under this ideology of otherness, eugenics was taken as necessary to a sound regime of social control. This explains why so many who considered themselves rational and progressive supported this regime. The Chicago School represents a turning point, a shift to sociological theories of delinquency. In this chapter, I defined this transition as rooted in a new version of otherness, one based on modernization theory. Modernization theory holds that all societies undergo a trajectory of historical development from an archaic phase to a modern phase (Parsons, 1971; Ram, 2012: 36), during which their ‘primitive mentality’ gives way to a capacity for abstract rationality (Frankenstein, 1953: 20). This type of otherness is still grounded in racial bias, but it assumes that the inferior and degenerate other is not different in kind or unable to change or develop. Rather, degenerate groups merely have yet to develop historically and culturally –​to reach the level of modernization enjoyed by healthy social groups. I used the term cultural–​historical atavism –​as opposed to biological atavism à la Lombroso –​to define this approach, whereby social pathologies ascribed to minority and immigrant groups (for example, laziness, trickery, or childishness) were considered the result of a lack of readiness, an inability to properly function in a modern urban environment. Yet modernization theory also meant that, with the 79

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right guidance and discipline, these problems of degenerate social groups could be corrected. This paternalistic approach was applied to immigrants and the urban poor of the metropole just as to the colonial other. I argue that it is through this lens that we should understand the positivist sociological theories in criminology, which began with the Chicago School and continued to dominate knowledge production in this field until the 1970s. Finally and importantly, despite the change that the Chicago School and modernization theory represent in criminological knowledge production, they did not really alter the responsibilization discourse at the heart of this field. Modernization theory kept intact the foundational ideas of pathology and otherness. As David Matza remarked, ‘pathology remained secure; it was merely moved on a bit from its personal lodging and located at the social level’ (1969: 45). In other words, the foundational assumption of otherness remained intact even when alternative environmental and social causes were considered. Sociological research and interpretations of crime did not break from the basic prism of otherness, and from the positivist–​ aetiological mode of knowledge production, which remained intent on finding its causes and controlling its effects. As such, criminological knowledge continued to adhere to the notion that the fault for crime lies with the socially marginalized themselves, rather than challenging the social structure or questioning the regime of social control. This discourse continued to shape criminological knowledge for years to come, and in particular in post-​Second World War American criminology. This will be our theme in the next chapter.

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Otherness as Subculture As we saw in the previous chapter, the production of criminological knowledge, as it transitioned out of the neo-​Lombrosian era to the growing dominance of the Chicago School, maintained the foundational idea of pathology, the epicentre of otherness. Some sort of pathology, it was assumed, leads to –​or at least increases a tendency toward –​criminal behaviour. Put differently, the existence of some pathology differentiated offenders, considered to be deviant, from non-​offenders. Mainstream positivist criminology, at that time, focused on the study of delinquent behaviour at the individual level, as opposed to the study of the criminal act and its jurisprudence, as in the classical school (Jeffery, 1959: 9). Individual criminality had been the focus of positivist criminology since the time of Lombroso or even before, and it would continue to guide the work of the scholars covered in this chapter. What had changed, as we already saw in the previous chapter, was the location of the individual pathology from internal to external: from something that could be found within the human body to something that originates in the social body. What remained constant for the aetiological positivist school in criminology was its focus on the question ‘Why do (some) people break the law?’, along with its motivation: to improve social control (Cohen, 1969: 14). As we know, it was Garland who first asserted that positivist criminology is the criminology of the other. The conceptualization of otherness discussed here, as we have already observed from analysing the work of Charles Goring and the early days of the Chicago School, entails a difference not in kind, but in degree only. This conviction deepened with modernization theory, as it advanced a cultural understanding of deviant behaviour. Accordingly, this difference was the result of a cultural lag, to use C. Wright Mills’ term (1943: 176), or 81

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cultural–​historical atavism, if you will –​meaning that the deviant other is stuck in an earlier cultural evolutionary stage, with the extent of the gap represented by the degree of their degeneration (or, as it was later termed, their disorganization or strain). Yet this softer deterministic pathology of the criminal other also means that the other is receptive to correction, opening the door to different kinds of interventions. This chapter reviews the era of grand positivist sociological theories in criminology, a period which coincided with a rising public perception regarding a frightening problem in American cities –​ namely, the rise of juvenile urban street gangs. The period covered here stretches roughly from the second and third decades of the twentieth century, with the establishment of the Chicago School as a new sociological voice, up through the mid-​or late 1960s. It begins by looking closely at the work of both Edwin Sutherland (differential association theory) and, to a lesser extent, Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay (social disorganization theory), which was mentioned in the previous chapter. It moves on to discuss Albert Cohen’s subculture theory, followed by Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin’s work on differential opportunity structures. In these contexts, the chapter also discusses the influence of Robert Merton’s strain theory. Throughout, I consider how all these theories reflect and reaffirm assumptions of otherness, and how the dominance of these theories meant that structural explanations of deviance received far less attention. As we shall see, while conceptions of cultural difference guide all the dominating aetiological social theories during this period, these ideas did not all look the same. The first two theories mentioned above (learning theory and disorganization theory) are based on the notions of cultural lag and cultural–​historical atavism introduced in the last chapter. These ideas date back to Lewis H. Morgan’s magnum opus, Ancient Society (1877), in which he described three main stages of cultural evolution: savagery, barbarism, and civilization (Eriksen and Nielsen, 2013: 24). This notion of cultural evolution reflects a particularistic conception of cultural history, in which all social groups are aligned on a sort of linear cultural trajectory, though they occupy different stages of development. Modernization theory, if we remember, asserts that through a process of acculturation and education, those who lag behind can be caught up to those who are more advanced, or ‘modernized’ (Ram, 2012: 41). Yet there is another anthropological conception of cultural difference, namely cultural relativism, which in many respects is the focal point of this chapter. 82

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This conception of cultural difference informs subculture theory and differential opportunity structure theory. Like cultural evolutionism, cultural relativism rejects the idea of biologically distinct races; but unlike evolutionism, it does not assume one continuum of cultural development. Cultural relativism –​a term coined by Franz Boas1 (Eriksen and Nielsen, 2013: 60) –​asserts that each social group has its own cultural character. Building on this idea, subculture theory and its offshoots distinguish between a confirmative middle-​class culture, and a disorganized working-​class culture which is prone to delinquency. Many of the social theories discussed in this chapter reference social mechanisms that affect everyone, but that differentiate on the basis of cultural content (that is, difference not in form, but in substance). Hence, the transition from modernization theory to subculture theory represents a more subtle form of otherness.

Edwin Sutherland: differential association theory Edwin Sutherland (1883–​1 950), arguably the most influential criminologist of the twentieth century, played a key role in transitioning criminological knowledge production from the multifactorial model of the neo-​Lombrosian era and into the dominance of the sociological paradigm. The neo-​Lombrosian era, if we remember, put emphasis on factors such as personality disorder, low intelligence, and heredity to explain deviant behaviour. Sutherland, particularly through his differential association theory, represents the emergence of grand aetiological social theories in the life course of criminology. From that point until the late 1960s and even after, sociology provided the dominant paradigms in criminology (Matza, 1964: 3; Laub and Sampson, 1991: 1402). In 1935, Sutherland moved from the University of Chicago to Indiana University to head its Department of Sociology. Under his leadership, Indiana’s sociology department became the mecca of criminological knowledge production. There, Sutherland cultivated a generation of prominent graduate students, among them Donald Cressey,2 Albert Cohen, and Lloyd Ohlin, who became giants in the field of criminology in their own right. In 1939, Sutherland was also elected president of the American Sociological Association. From this position, he could spread his influence further. Sutherland actually started his intellectual journey in criminology as a rather ordinary scholar. He received his PhD from the University 83

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of Chicago in 1913. At that point, the Chicago School was already becoming a prominent institution, but it was a few years before its rise to dominance with the introduction of social ecology theory. The historical moment when Sutherland matriculated also means that he grew up intellectually during the Progressive Era. Thus, his first steps in the field were influenced by the neo-​Lombrosian paradigm, and as such, he accepted the multifactor model. His first (1924) edition of Criminology –​which would later, under the name Principles of Criminology (1947), become the canonical textbook in the field –​still paid homage to the multifactor model. Only in later editions would the focus on sociological inquiry take hold (Friedrichs et al, 2017: 30). Unlike his later Chicago-​style position, which also included a macrosociologist approach of cultural conflict,3 in the 1924 edition his unit of analysis was still confined to the individual (Laub and Sampson, 1991: 1411). In this first edition, he asserted that ‘knowledge can be secured best by the individual case study’ (quoted in Laub and Sampson 1991: 1411), and that data collection in criminology should include ‘detailed records of the development of personalities’ (quoted in Laub and Sampson 1991: 1411), by which he meant ‘mental and educational tests’. He also at that point endorsed a potential impact of biology on individual delinquency (quoted in Laub and Sampson, 1991: 1412). The publication of the 1924 edition was still a milestone in criminology. Sutherland’s motivation to write this work was his dissatisfaction with existing textbooks in criminology, whose evidence-​ based focus lacked, he thought, theoretical context (Friedrichs et al, 2017: 29). Thus, already in the first edition we see Sutherland’s drive to ground criminological research in a theoretical framework. But the big shift in Sutherland’s thinking from an empirical, bottom-​up paradigm to one that was more theoretically driven came as an answer to the Michael–​Adler report (1933). This report –​formally titled Crime, Law, and Social Science, by Jerome Michael and Mortimer J. Adler –​ was commissioned by the privately owned Bureau of Social Hygiene (itself funded by the Rockefeller family) as part of an effort to assess the state of criminology and criminal justice in the United States. Its critique, and particularly the claim that American criminology suffered from a ‘lack of theoretical development’ (Friedrichs et al, 2017: 43, 45),4 demanded a serious response. Sutherland took it upon himself to respond to the report. His growing influence at this time helped push criminology away from the multifactor model (Laub and 84

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Sampson, 1991: 1416–​1417). However, this took a deliberate and active effort on Sutherland’s part, specifically against scholars such as Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck of Harvard, who continued to promote and advance multiple-​factors research,5 and against scholars such as William Sheldon and E.A. Hooton, also of Harvard, who continued to search for biological causes of delinquency (Laub and Sampson, 1991: 1422). In response to the 1935 edition of Principles of Criminology, Sutherland’s good friend from the University of Chicago, Henry McKay (who we shall meet in more detail below), made reference to Sutherland’s theory of criminal behaviour (Friedrichs et al, 2017: 35). As the story goes, it was the first time Sutherland realized that he had one.6 Following this realization, in the 1937 edition we find a robust development of Sutherland’s now famous differential association theory (Laub and Sampson, 1991: 1413); and the following editions, published between 1939 and 1947, were specifically ‘designed to substitute … differential association theory for that of multiple factors’ (Laub and Sampson, 1991: 1416–​1417). During this decade, Sutherland’s reputation soared, and Principles of Criminology became the dominant textbook in criminology –​a position it would continue to hold even after Sutherland’s death, under the leadership of his student, Cressey. Indeed, after the 1939 edition, sociology had a firm hold on criminological knowledge production, thus narrowing the gates against scholarship from other fields (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990: 70). Sutherland’s differential association theory (also known as social learning theory) builds on the Chicago School’s emphasis on social interaction (Cohen, 2010: 3). He argued that criminal behaviour, like other behaviours (including confirmative behaviour), is learned through intimate group interactions –​that is, through a socialization process whereby people imitate and internalize the values of role models and others they identify with. Sutherland grounded the superiority of his theory against the multifactor model in methodological reasoning. Following his colleague at Indiana University, Alfred R. Lindesmith, Sutherland embraced analytic induction –​ a qualitative research methodology under which a hypothesis is shown to be confirmed so long as it fits any tested case. It was clear that this expectation does not hold in multifactor research. More precisely, Sutherland argued that for a scientific explanation to hold, its conditions must be ‘always present when a phenomenon occurs and … never present when the phenomenon does not occur’ 85

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(quoted in Laub and Sampson, 1991: 1418). This meant, in turn, a rejection of probabilistic models of causality –​or as Sutherland was famous for saying, ‘85 percent of anything could not be a cause. It had to be 100 percent or it was not a theory’ (quoted in Laub and Sampson, 1991: 1419). Sutherland set a standard that was consistent with the theory of differential association. It helped, of course, that his theory was rather amorphous, allowing it to fit almost any case.7 As Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi argued, ‘the genius of Sutherland … was that as he produced a theory of criminality, he simultaneously produced a science to protect it from research results and from competitive theories’ (quoted in Laub and Sampson, 1991: 1419).8 Or as Hirschi remarked, ‘Perhaps the outstanding event in the intellectual history of theories of cultural deviance was not a decision about the nature of man, but a rather ordinary appearing decision [by Sutherland] about the nature of scientific explanation’ (quoted in Laub and Sampson, 1991: 1419). At any rate, differential association theory, following the Chicago School, affirmed a new understanding of the offender as an other. This delinquent other was not just similar biologically to the non-​offender, as Goring had already declared (differing only in degree, not in kind). Now, it seemed that the offender was a product of the same basic sociological mechanism as the non-​offender –​namely, socialization. Putting it differently, the difference between the two is not racial, and not even a matter of social mechanics. With Sutherland’s theory, criminological depiction of the delinquent had come a long way from Lombroso’s ‘born criminal’ and earlier phrenological accounts. On a spectrum of otherness, if zero represents a difference in type, and one represents no difference at all, Sutherland’s otherness pushes the needle closer to one. It is a difference in the content of values, not in any form of basic or shared human socialization. What remained intact in Sutherland’s conceptualization, however, is the existence of a pathology. To be sure, in Sutherland’s account this pathology is acquired and not inherited. Nonetheless, this pathology differentiates between two groups of people: the delinquent other and the normative non-​delinquent. As we know, according to differential association theory, the acquired pathology is the result of a differential learning process by which, through interaction and socialization, a person internalizes delinquent cultural norms and behaviours. Culture thus assumes the key role in creating difference, and in increasing the propensity for crime. 86

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All told, despite its more advanced and nuanced version of difference, Sutherland’s differential association theory did not break from the assumption of otherness that came to define positivist criminology even in its sociological phase. Indeed, it might be argued that this position vis-​à-​vis the offender as other partly explains Sutherland’s success and influence, beyond his more scientific approach, his personal charisma, and his symbolic capital. Moreover, as we know, Sutherland was not the only grand theorist to earn esteem in the field of criminology. I propose that the reason for the success of these theories lies elsewhere, and specifically in ideology. That is, by maintaining the ideology of otherness, albeit in a more refined way, the grand theories bolstered the gatekeepers of the social structure, and tapped into a shared sentiment about the cultural difference of the dangerous other. I shall return to this point.

Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay: social disorganization theory In 1942, roughly at the same time that Sutherland’s differential association theory was gaining recognition, Clifford Shaw (1895–​ 1957) and Henry McKay (1899–​1980) published their now-​renowned book, Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas: A Study of Rates of Delinquents in Relation to Differential Characteristics of Local Communities in American Cities. In the previous chapter of this book, I briefly discussed Shaw and McKay’s disorganization theory as part of the scholarly legacy of the Chicago School. In this chapter, I concentrate on the cultural explanation of delinquent behaviour which is at the heart of the theory. Shaw and McKay, by compiling data from four different time periods (1900–​1906; 1917–​1923; 1927–​1933; and 1934–​1940) showed how, over a prolonged time frame spanning different eras, juvenile delinquency continued to be concentrated in the same areas of Chicago. Specifically, building on Park and Burgess’s concentric zone theory, Shaw and McKay located the homes of all the delinquent boys reported to law enforcement in the reviewed periods, and demonstrated that despite the passing of generations and population change, delinquency continued to persist in the same geographical areas. The areas where the homes of the juvenile delinquents were most heavily concentrated were zone one (the central business district) and zone two (the industrial and commercial sector). As Shaw and McKay indicate, these areas were 87

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transitional, meaning that new (poor) immigrants ‘landed’ there, then moved out into better neighbourhoods and even to the suburbs once they became more adjusted and better off. Thus, as time passed, groups of German, Irish, English/​Scots, and Scandinavian immigrants gave way to Italians, Poles, and Slavs (Beirne and Messerschmidt, 2000: 125). Those who left, they illustrate, did not carry their delinquency with them. (Notably, this pattern was not replicated by African-​Americans, Latinos, or Native Americans.) Yet despite the turnover between ethnic groups and generations, delinquents continued to be concentrated in the same areas. The evidence Shaw and McKay provided was most enlightening: crime is highly associated with the social environment. But keep in mind that Shaw and McKay did not research the geographic spread of crime. Instead, they studied the whereabouts of individuals identified as having a high tendency toward criminal behaviour. Their conclusion was that ‘disorganized’ inner-​city communities are a fertile subterrain for delinquent behaviour. Shaw and McKay did acknowledge the class divide, and the role that the social structure plays in promoting delinquency. They recognize the strain facing low-​income youth, and the dearth of opportunities for them to gain material success through legitimate means (1942: 319; see also Beirne and Messerschmidt, 2000: 126). Yet ultimately, as we saw with Sutherland, it was the cultural divide that caught their attention and explanatory powers. Thus, they leap over structural social conditions, and pin the cause of delinquency not on the near-​absence of legitimate ways to meet material objectives, but on a supposed breakdown of social values in certain communities (Beirne and Messerschmidt, 2000: 128). This is the foundation of disorganization theory. As we can see, Shaw and McKay’s disorganization theory also follows the idea of differential socialization and cultural divide as the origin of delinquency. Their conclusion is based on what they saw as the existence of ‘diverse systems of values’ (1942: 165). Essentially, they argued that ‘delinquency is essentially group behavior’ (Shaw and McKay, 1942: 166), and that different social groups hold ‘competing systems of values’, some of which carry ‘traditions of delinquency’ (1942: 436). Following the idea of a cultural divide, Shaw and McKay attribute the latter to working-​class or poor immigrant communities, where children grow up exposed to predatory youth gangs and deviant adult culture, such as organized crime, in contrast to middle-​class neighbourhoods, where good social organization exists and children 88

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internalize conventional values and conformity to law (1942: 171). More precisely, in Shaw and McKay’s words: Moral values range from those that are strictly conventional to those in direct opposition to conventionality as symbolized by the family, the church, and other institutions common to our general society. The deviant values are symbolized by groups and institutions ranging from criminal gangs engaged in theft and the marketing of stolen goods … to quasi-​legitimate businesses and the rackets. (1942: 171–​172; see also Beirne and Messerschmidt, 2000: 125) Shaw and McKay echo Sutherland’s culturally based form of delinquent otherness. Their work emphasized the divide between middle-​class values, representing normative social culture, and lower-​class or working-​class values, representing a social culture prone to delinquency. If we remember from the introduction to this book, difference is fundamental for creating cultural meaning (Hall, 1997: 236). But now, the framework constructed and supported by scholarly work that asserts difference based on ‘observable “facts” and tested evidence’ is that of the cultural divide. As we turn our discussion to subculture theory, we see that this conceptualization of a cultural divide and, as such, this framework of otherness, continues to reign.

Albert Cohen: subculture theory Subculture theory, as suggested by its name, vigorously advanced the idea of a cultural divide as the causal foundation for delinquency. Actually, earlier American and British theories of subculture also applied biology and psychology to define deviant behaviour (Blackman, 2014: 498). But later, influenced by anthropological thought, the focus shifted to cultural values and norms, and the notion of subculture became part of the conceptual vocabulary applied by the Chicago School (Blackman, 2014: 497). In the wake of these developments, subculture theory emerged as a prominent explanation of deviant behaviour, to the point where it dominated criminological thought during the 1950s and 1960s (Miller et al, 1997: 169). Subculture theory synthesized and modified previous positivist sociological theories to explain criminal behaviour –​and especially youth delinquency –​in different settings, particularly urban underclass 89

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contexts. Subculture theory had two main pillars. First, adherents of subculture theory postulated that some environments are specifically likely to be characterized by nonnormative belief systems. Second, following the Chicagoan idea that people internalize values and beliefs through meaningful interactions, they argued that people in these environments are more likely to adopt criminogenic values (Miller et al, 1997: 168). A subculture thus referred to a domain governed by deviant values, as opposed to common confirmative social norms –​a domain in which, at the very least, crime is condoned. Walter Miller defined it in this way: ‘There is a substantial segment of present-​day American society whose way of life, values, and characteristic patterns of behavior are the product of a distinctive cultural system which may be termed “lower class” ’ (1958: 6). For subculture theory, cultural variation is taken as a fundamental sociological factor, just like the power of conformity (Miller et al, 1997: 168). It thus affirms the idea, one which we recognize already in Sutherland’s work, that the deviant other is only other in content, not form. Moreover, while the concept of a deviant subculture continues the notion that delinquency is a group behaviour, as already asserted by disorganization theory, it moves the needle of differentiation even further from the level of the individual offender to the group. Subculture theory is based on a relativist understanding of culture, where the deviant subculture is perceived as having an independent existence, rather than as representing an undeveloped and deficient cultural stage. It thus informed a rearticulation of otherness, one which is still based on cultural difference, but standing on its own, not merely as the negation of the dominant culture. In a sense, subculture theory re-​established otherness as difference in type. Yet it is also safe to say that despite recognizing working-​or lower-​class values and norms as independent, the theory still assumes and affirms normative relations of control. Once more, we remember that the divide creates meaning. Jacques Derrida (1972), in this respect, argued that there are very few neutral binary classifications; there is always a relation of power between the categories. It is Albert Cohen (1918–​2014) who is most associated with subculture theory. In his highly respected 1955 book, Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang (based on his dissertation), Cohen integrated Sutherland’s differential association theory, which was then the most central social theory in criminology, with Robert Merton’s strain theory, which followed a Durkheimian functionalist approach. 90

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In the process, Cohen helped make the latter a significant theory in criminology. Cohen was actually a student of both Merton (as an undergraduate at Harvard) and Sutherland (as a graduate student at Indiana University, where he studied for a time before returning to Harvard to complete his PhD). He admired both men and was intellectually inspired by both theories, not least by their different approaches and conclusions. It was the disagreements between the theories that pushed Cohen to develop a synthesis of sorts between them, drawing on the explanatory force of each to overcome shortcomings in the other, as a way to explain the phenomenon of juvenile delinquent gangs. Cohen followed in the steps of the Chicago School, building on earlier studies by Shaw and McKay as well as Sutherland (Blackman, 2014: 500). Cohen generally accepted the Chicagoan tradition which saw learning and socialization as taking place through meaningful interactions. Following Sutherland, he accepted that ‘delinquency develops through a process of internalizing delinquent models’ (Cohen, 1957: 785). Yet he was dissatisfied with Sutherland’s starting point, which Cohen saw as proceeding directly from the position that juvenile delinquency exists, without considering its origins (Beirne and Messerschmidt, 2000: 146–​147). Cohen did not think we should take for granted the existence of juvenile delinquent values and beliefs. Rather, he wished to understand the origin and function of this culture, not merely as a reaction to or faulty development of normative culture, but in its own right (Cohen, 2010: 4). For Cohen, neither differential association theory nor social disorganization theory –​nor the Chicagoan tradition generally –​offered an answer to this question, or even tried to answer it. Cohen’s aim was to provide a theory of delinquent subculture –​how it began and what kept it going. He found his answer in the functionalist sociological tradition. As a student of Talcott Parsons and Merton, who both greatly influenced his intellectual upbringing, Cohen developed the concept of the subculture as a theory of youth deviance. Parsons, in his seminal work Age and Sex in the Social Structure in the United States (1942),9 defined youth culture as an agency for socialization, similar to the family (Blackman, 2014: 500). With this in mind, Cohen asks a Durkheimian question: What function do deviant values serve for those who subscribe to them? (Blackman, 2014: 497). Via Merton’s theory of deviance, Cohen asserts that delinquency is a response to problems of adjustment (1957: 785); a solution to the strain caused 91

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by the gap between the means available to the lower class and the goals established by middle-​class standards (Beirne and Messerschmidt, 2000: 150). Hence, for Cohen, the delinquent subculture emerged as a solution to the strain experienced by working-​class boys in response to their rejection by the dominant –​and unreachable –​middle-​class culture. The gang was the antithesis of middle-​class culture (Cohen, 2010: 5–​6). Yet Cohen was not completely satisfied with Merton’s strain conceptualization, because it failed, as he saw it, to account for the fact that often, as in the case of violence for its own sake or vandalism, delinquent gangs did not use deviant means to achieve the dominating culturally accepted (that is, material) goals. Rather, he characterized gang activities as non-​utilitarian, oriented not for profit so much as to express rejection of middle-​class values (Cohen, 2010: 6). As such, the delinquent subculture developed oppositional norms which are often negative and destructive, involving behaviour such as random violence, vandalism, and other acts that provide instant gratification (Henry and Lanier, 2009: 268). Yet, in turning its back on middle-​class culture, the delinquent subculture created something new. Cohen’s book offered a theory of the delinquent gang subculture and why it was attractive to working-​class youth, especially boys. The solution that the delinquent subculture offered to the problems of adjustment and strain was an alternative cultural framework, which operates according to different criteria and involved different sets of symbols, rituals, meanings, and sources of social cohesion (Blackman, 2014: 498). In this alternative social environment, working-​class boys could find and sustain recognition and self-​esteem. At this point in his analysis, Cohen returns to Sutherland and the Chicago School: through social interaction, group members gain social status and self-​esteem denied elsewhere in society (Miller et al, 1997: 168). In short, in Cohen’s theory, a subculture is a set of beliefs, values, codes, tastes, and so on, which differ from those of the main or dominant culture. These beliefs and norms govern the social relations of group members as a closed world, both compensating for members’ inability to be part of the dominant middle-​class culture, and providing an alternative to it (Beirne and Messerschmidt, 2000: 147). Importantly, for Cohen, subculture is an explanatory concept, and he generally refrains from judging or evaluating working-​class and middle-​class cultures. Indeed, he even notes that there is value in aspects of working-​class socialization and parenting, such as its ability to foster independence. He also points out, however, that with respect to 92

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raising children there is a crucial difference: namely, that by definition only middle-​class parents can provide the skills necessary for children to succeed, because the standards upon which young people are evaluated, even in early life, are in middle­class terms. This means that working-​class children are destined to fail (Beirne and Messerschmidt, 2000: 148). The delinquent subculture offers a solution –​a separate, independent cultural setting in which working-​class children have or can obtain the skills needed to gain status and recognition. Ultimately, subculture theory recognizes the cultural conflict between the two groups, even if they are independent of one another. Accordingly, it is this conflict (and its associated strain), and not some innate pathology, that creates delinquent values and leads to the othering of some youth groups. If we take seriously, as I think we should, the point made by Derrida (and others, such as Stuart Hall) that there are almost no neutral binary constellations, then we must remember that the cultural divide (or cultural conflict), as Cohen himself recognized, is rooted in a relation of power. However, I argue that the significance of this relation of power for the construction and affirmation of otherness is not sufficiently addressed by subculture theory. I shall return to this point.

Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin: differential opportunity structures In Delinquency and Opportunity: A Study of Delinquent Gangs (2013 [1960]), Richard Cloward (1926–​2001) and Lloyd Ohlin (1918–​2008) follow Cohen in focusing on culture and collective activities. As they state, their work ‘is about delinquent gangs, or subcultures, as they are typically found among adolescent males in lower-​class areas of large urban centers’ (2013 [1960]: 1). Yet in contrast to Cohen, Cloward and Ohlin returned to the Mertonian idea that the population they were studying –​lower-​class adolescents, mainly boys –​desired conventional goals, namely economic success. They saw this group as rational in their aims, and as not rejecting middle-​class values, but as frustrated by the dearth of means available to achieve these goals (Henry and Lanier, 2009: 269). As such, Cloward and Ohlin’s work scales down the idea of working-​class culture as separate, and recentres strain as the source of otherness. However, to this conceptualization, they add further structural complexity by arguing that in the delinquent world, the relationship between goals and opportunities is more multifaceted. 93

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Delinquent actors have differential access to opportunities for achieving culturally acceptable goals by illegitimate means (Henry and Lanier, 2009). Cloward and Ohlin’s differential opportunity theory, like subculture theory, is a product of a synthesis between the grand sociological theories of criminal behaviour. They integrated the Chicago School’s social ecology theories, Shaw and McKay’s social disorganization theory, Sutherland’s differential association, and Merton’s strain theory. They divide these theories into two main streams of thought on the problem of delinquency. The first are conceptualizations that focus on ‘the sources of pressure that can lead to deviance’ (Durkheim and Merton), while the second are models that offer ‘general ideas about the way in which features of social structure regulate the selection and evolution of deviant solutions’ (Shaw and McKay, and Sutherland) (Cloward and Ohlin, 2013 [1960]: x). Similarly to Cohen’s subculture theory, Cloward and Ohlin argued that lower-​class adolescents turn to gangs in response to their sense of rejection and alienation from the dominant middle-​class culture. Building on Merton’s strain theory, they posited that gangs offered a solution to the strain arising from a sense of being treated unjustly by the dominant society, and of being denied legitimate means to succeed. And following the tradition of the Chicago School, they posited that delinquent gangs were formed as an outcome of learning through interactions between similarly affected adolescents (Henry and Lanier, 2009: 269). However, Cloward and Ohlin’s interest in the development of delinquent cultural values was driven by a special attentiveness to the differences between various systems of delinquent norms, and to the conditions that set them apart with respect to the type of delinquent acts engaged in (for example, violence, theft, or drug use) (2013 [1960]: ix). Cloward and Ohlin argued that both strain theory and subculture theory failed to explain the fact that deviance often assumed different forms. Their solution was grounded in the observation that even among delinquent actors, illegitimate means to achieve success are not evenly distributed (Beirne and Messerschmidt, 2000: 152–​154). Instead of one delinquent subculture that stands in opposition to middle-​class culture, they recognized multiple types of delinquent subcultures, which develop as a function of the legitimate and illegitimate opportunities available in the neighbourhood where

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members of the subculture live and socialize (Henry and Lanier, 2009: 270). Altogether, Cloward and Ohlin identified three principal categories of delinquent youth subcultures. The first type is the criminal subculture. This subculture develops in social ecological conditions where an organized (adult) criminal culture already exists. Following Chicago School tradition and Sutherland’s conceptualization, Cloward and Ohlin asserted that young people growing up in such conditions have the opportunity to learn from more organized adult criminals. Most of their delinquent activity takes the form of property crime, though they also engage in drug dealing, numbers rackets, and so on. Thus, the members of this subculture operate chiefly to achieve material gains. The second type is the conflict subculture. The members of such a subculture live in more disorganized social ecological surroundings, which manifest in a transient population and few positive adult role models; altogether, they are more deprived of conventional opportunity structures. As such, their delinquent culture fosters violence, vandalism, and other ‘expressive’ crimes, which are motivated by anger and frustration. The third subculture is the retreatist subculture, a term borrowed from Merton’s typology.10 Members of this social group are (using Merton’s vocabulary) ‘dropouts’, often abusers of alcohol or drugs, who participate in criminal activity to enable and fund their addiction. As Cloward and Ohlin assert, members of the retreatist subculture are considered ‘double failures’ because they not only fail to be part of conventional society, but are also rejected by the two other subcultures (Henry and Lanier, 2009: 270). Cloward and Ohlin’s more complex division of subcultures is based on their more robust acknowledgement of structural factors. Here we see a highly nuanced version of delinquent otherness that is grounded in social conditions (together with cultural norms, to be sure) instead of individual pathology. As noted above, Cloward and Ohlin also scale down Cohen’s notion of subculture as something separate from and independent of conventional culture. Yet, at the end of the day, as with the other grand social theories covered in this chapter, under Cloward and Ohlin’s differential opportunity theory, delinquency and opportunity remain at the level of an aetiological explanation for the otherness of the offender. In this respect, any policy that aims to address this knowledge will still react to the otherness of the offenders, not to the structural power relations that arguably constructed them.

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Further directions: congruities and challenges As I have argued in this chapter, the era of the grand sociological theories in the life course of Western criminology was still one in which criminological knowledge was marked by othering those who were found to exhibit deviant behaviour. While I have focused on the four main theories, this was also the case for other theoretical developments which occurred toward the latter end of this period. Let us consider control theory, most commonly known through Travis Hirschi’s Causes of Delinquency (1969). To some degree, Hirschi’s conceptualization turns the approach of the Chicago School –​which focuses on how people learn and internalize delinquent behaviour through interactions with others –​on its head, by looking at how people develop self-​control and norms of conformity with the larger society. (The Chicago School approach is often called social learning theory, while Hirschi’s approach is known as control theory, or social bond theory.) According to Hirschi, it is actually people with weak social bonds, that is, those who do not associate with others and therefore have fewer social attachments,11 who are more likely to deviate. Moreover, he challenged the idea that crime is something that one learns. Nonetheless, Hirschi’s control theory is still an aetiological account of individual delinquent behaviour, and as such, delinquency as otherness. Moreover, while Hirschi’s account, like the other sociological theories, challenged the idea that offenders are different from non-​offenders in kind, they all still ultimately reproduced the definition of deviants as dysfunctional and resistant (Blackman, 2014: 496). As such, the delinquent other is someone who needs to be controlled. Another major theoretical development that took place in the early 1960s, though its roots date back to the late 1930s12 and early 1950s,13 was labelling theory. Labelling theory became sufficiently prevalent that, for a time, it replaced subculture theory as the leading paradigm in criminology (Miller et al, 1997: 169), though, as we shall see in the next chapter, its rise to dominance was short-​lived. Its relationship with the concept of otherness is complex. Although there is no doubt that labelling theory advanced a culturally nuanced understanding by continuing to humanize and normalize those considered as deviants (Liazos, 1972: 105), and decisively rejected the deterministic concept of the other, it was still a theory of social pathology (Downes and Rock, 1998: 183). Indeed, the title of the pathbreaking work of 96

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Edwin Lemert, one of the founders of labelling theory, is exactly that: Social Pathology: A Systematic Approach to the Theory of Sociopathic Behavior (1951). Thus, labelling theory’s objective is to explain deviant behaviour, and as such, it cannot totally detach from the concept of otherness. Labelling theory follows in the Chicago School’s tradition, in that it stressed social and symbolic interaction as a key social dynamic. Indeed, labelling theorists, or, as they were also known, social reaction theorists or symbolic interactionists, were considered ‘neo-​ Chicagoans’, and labelling theory was known as the ‘second Chicago School’ (Downes and Rock, 1998: 182). Yet it transformed how deviance was studied, even if just for a short while, by building on the theory of social constructionism, which asserts that all meaning is socially created. Labelling theorists thus examined how deviance is socially constructed based on people’s social reactions to the actions of others. Put differently, labelling theory asserted that deviance is not a quality possessed by an actor, but, rather, is constructed based on a process of social interaction (Cohen, 1969: 17). However, departing from the interactionist tradition of the Chicago School seen in the previous theories of deviance, labelling theory did not focus on interaction within the social group, but instead on that between those labelled rule-​breakers and rule-​enforcers (Cohen, 1969: 28). As such, labelling theory focused on the criminal justice system itself as generating crime and delinquency. For labelling scholars, this was particularly true with respect to adolescents: the greater the public reaction to their actions, the more intense the ‘dramatization of evil’, in Tannenbaum’s terms (quoted in Cohen, 1969: 28),14 and the less tolerance by law enforcement, the more these troubled adolescents were deemed likely to internalize their label as delinquents. Labelling theory and the conception of social constructionism played a role in challenging positivism. The positivist sociological theories, as C. Wright Mills already told us, under-​define (or do not define at all) key conceptions such as ‘socialization’, which are then used as moral epithets (Mills, 1943: 169). By contrast, labelling theory aimed to shed light on the social processes that give meaning to social phenomena. In this respect, labelling theory studied societal reactions to deviance instead of deviance as an existing pathology. It should be noted, however, that labelling theory ultimately offers a causal explanation for deviant behaviour only at the level of the individual (Mills, 1943: 27) –​ a theme that will continue to take precedence in criminology in the 97

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following decades, as we shall see in the next chapter. Moreover, crucially, labelling theory never broke from the ideological tradition of a liberal–​capitalist social framework (Barmaki, 2019: 256) and, to a significant extent, reinforced subculture theory by further introducing a cultural meaning of deviance (Downes and Rock, 1998: 177–​178). All in all, labelling theory, although taking significant steps away from the grand positivist theories in criminology, continues to remain within the boundaries of an aetiological explanation that eventually leads to a type of otherness, albeit socially constructed and under the responsibility of enforcement and punishment agencies. Further critiques of the grand positivist theories came from other theoretical approaches developed in the late 1950s and 1960s. In this respect, Gresham Sykes and David Matza’s neutralization theory proceeds from a critical reading of subculture theory. In a nutshell, neutralization theory posits that individuals tend to be dissuaded from engaging in delinquent or norm-​violating acts by the guilt and shame which typically accompany such conduct. This includes offenders who also adhere to conformal values and do not operate according to an alternative value system. Therefore, those who choose to engage in such acts must neutralize these feelings in order to protect their self-​image. In setting the conceptual terrain for their ideas, Matza and Sykes sharply defined the more moderate, yet persistent, othering engaged in by the grand sociological theories of deviant behaviour. Under these theories, they write, delinquency is perceived ‘as a result of relatively normal personalities’ –​as opposed to people with physiological or personality deficiencies –​‘exposed to a “disturbed” social environment –​particularly in the form of a deviant sub-​culture in which the individual learns to be delinquent as others learn to conform to the law’ (1961: 712). Matza and Sykes note that in contrast to earlier years, when it was easier to believe that the lower classes were inferior and by nature less moral, the scholars of the grand sociological theories ‘have avoided this reassuring error’. Yet these scholars continued to adhere to the ‘belief that delinquency is predominantly a lower class phenomenon’. As such, they continued to pursue factors and social dynamics which were deemed to foster delinquency within certain segments of the lower class –​and to set them apart (that is, lead them to deviate) from the rest of society (1961: 718). In other words, Matza and Sykes argue, all these theories are in agreement that delinquent behaviour is caused by some pathology, which manifests not only in terms of the delinquent’s criminal behaviour, but in terms 98

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of the delinquent’s basic values as well (1961: 715). To this we might add, as Stanley Cohen accurately observed, ‘pathology is defined from the point of view of the group making the definition’ (1969: 11). All told, with minor exceptions, the era of grand sociological theories in criminology preserved and continued the original legacy of positivist criminology as the criminology of the other. In this respect, all positivist–​aetiological accounts, as Matza tells us, are based on three shared assumptions. The first is that criminological knowledge should study the delinquent actor, not the legal norm. The second is that valid and legitimate criminological knowledge is based on scientific status, which means that it adheres to some level of deterministic knowledge of causality. And third, as it was repeatedly argued, the delinquent actor is fundamentally different based on some pathology (Matza, 1964: ch 1; Cohen, 1969: 24). Hence, the conceptual point of departure of these theories, as well as their conclusion, is that delinquent pathology exists as a fact, and that the goal of research is to find it. To press this point further, this means that otherness is both an underlying perception as well as the conceptual output of positivist criminology. As Stanley Cohen put it, ‘deviance is thus something to be explained away, rather than explained’ (1969: 12). But, as Matza so rightly stressed, ‘no one has delinquency, like having a cold’ (1964: 24). Still the essential alternative to positivist criminology, as we shall see in the next chapter, came from a totally different direction. This was the re-​emergence of classical theory, in the form of the neoclassical theories which would come to the fore in the field of criminology in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In fact, we already find classical influences both in Matza’s work with Sykes on neutralization theory (1961), and in Matza’s later drift theory (1964). These theories offer a kind of integration between the positivist and classical approaches in that they treat delinquency as a process, not a quality of a person (Cohen, 1969: 24). More precisely, in neutralization theory, Matza and Sykes saw offenders as not only aware, but as accepting of confirmative society (1961: 717), with no huge gap between the middle-​class value system and delinquent values (1961: 713). Rather, following a Mertonian understanding of strain, Matza and Sykes suggest that offenders adhere to confirmative dominant norms in belief, but find them ineffective in practice (1961: 712). Moreover, they highlight that individuals who operate under a framework of delinquent values may do so in a way that is temporary rather than constant (Cohen, 1969: 25). Later, in drift theory, Matza specifically argued that 99

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offenders are committed neither to a delinquent subculture nor to the conventional culture, but may choose, more or less consciously, to drift between the one and the other, often even several times in the course of a single day (Matza, 1964: 28; Beirne and Messerschmidt, 2000: 159). This position implicitly echoes classical thought, and challenges the positivist foundation of othering, with its idea of cultural duality.

Differentiation as explanation As we know, the grand sociological theories in criminology were fully part of positivist criminology as the criminology of the other. In this respect, one can even look at the paradigmatic transition from neo-​Lombrosian multifactor explanations of deviant behaviour to the sociological era as a limited transformation. From this perspective, the debate between Sutherland and the Gluecks was an in-​house debate; that is, one that did not really challenge the boundaries of positivist criminology, and, particularly, its basic assertion regarding the ‘otherness’ of the delinquent. As we saw, Sutherland’s differential association theory, as well as disorganization theory and subculture theory, continue the thread of separation between offenders and non-​offenders. In the case of the sociological theories, the separation was along cultural lines, following the Chicago School’s tradition. Indeed, these theories emphatically emphasized cultural division as their core explanation for criminal behaviour. As Matza summarized, ‘Differentiation is the favored method of positivist explanation’ (1964: 11). Arguably, the most prominent shortcoming of the grand positivist sociological theories in criminology is their essential omission of social structure as a consideration. The focus on individual pathology and othering overshadows and distracts attention from structural failures. As Mills already argued, the idea of pathological deviant behaviour does not make sense even from a statistical standpoint: how could a phenomenon that is so widespread be ‘abnormal’ (1943: 174)? The failure to consider the larger problems of social structure is not only endemic to the Chicago School tradition, but can be found even in Merton’s strain theory. In the final analysis, nonconformist conduct is that of ‘others’ –​the lower classes (Beirne and Messerschmidt, 2000: 133). In fact, one can read Merton’s theory of delinquency or deviant behaviour as a sort of social disorganization and, as such, tied 100

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to the Chicagoan tradition as well (2000: 129). Regardless, Merton was criticized for not paying sufficient attention to the structural causes of strain, which he referenced only in passing (2000: 132). A related important omission of the grand positivist sociological theories is their lack of serious consideration for how deviant behaviour is defined. Instead, as we know, they treat deviant behaviour as if it is isolated from the social constructionist decision to define an act as criminal. All told, we can recognize how these theories help to legitimize and sustain the social order, asserting the fundamentals of industrial–​capitalist society through the premise of differentiation and othering. Sutherland’s scholarly work, in this respect, stands out. He did question the legal definitions of criminal acts, particularly in his classic work on white-​collar crime. But even in Sutherland’s more subversive writing on white-​collar crime, he did not really challenge the core of the social order. That is, although he boldly argued for redefining crime to include harmful acts by the powerful that were not in the law books, he did not really challenge the social structure, nor did he seriously relate it to the causes of crime. Sutherland, in fact, did not consider the role of the state at all. As Matza puts it, ‘Among their most notable accomplishments, the criminological positivists succeeded in what would seem the impossible. They separated the study of crime from the workings and theory of the state’ (Matza 1969: 143; also quoted in Cohen, 1996: 1). By this he meant that Sutherland, and the positivist criminologists in general, ignore the political nature of the definition of crime. In ignoring the political essence of how crime is defined –​and, by extension, how we define the offender –​Sutherland, and positivist criminologists in general, chose to disregard social power relations. As such, they also disregarded the essence of the otherness they themselves helped to secure. In this, they joined the programmatic effort to control those who society’s power holders considered dangerous. Put differently, the grand sociological theories provided scientific justification for securing otherness, thus helping to hide its socio-​political root (that is, power). And they did this despite being progressive in their take on social dynamics (with their assertion that the offender is not different in kind, but merely suffers the bad luck of being exposed to a different mode of socialization). In essence, despite its more cautious, moderate, and evolved versions of offenders’ otherness, the era of the grand sociological theories did not bring about any significant change with respect to the discourse 101

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of responsibilization. The same discourse that, by and large, placed the responsibility for crime on individuals, rather than the social structure, continued –​only now with the addition of cultural divisions as the source of the pathology that leads to delinquent behaviour. As noted, a challenge for the prevailing conceptions of deviant pathology and otherness developed when under the analytical umbrella of the sociology of deviance, the focus shifted from doing a ‘sociology of the deviant’ to doing a ‘sociology of deviance’ itself. Yet even the work of socially reflexive scholars such as Howard Becker or Matza was reserved and contracted (Downes and Rock, 1998: 270), particularly with respect to their failure to critically analyse the ways that power functions based on the social structure and class divide. As Alexander Liazos put it, ‘in the designation of what is “deviant,” in their substantive analyses they show a profound unconcern with power and its implications’ (1972: 105). A body of work which would centre on power, social structure, and the class divide, instead of on delinquent behaviour as a type of otherness, had to wait for radical criminology, which emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Radical criminology –​mainly based on a Marxist perspective –​challenged the idea that culpability for crime lies with either the individual or the subculture. There was growing attention to work done in the sociology of law, the sociology of punishment, and critical revisionist criminal justice history, including –​to offer just a few examples out of many –​the successful reprint in 1968 of Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer’s Punishment and Social Structure,15 William Chambliss’s analysis of the law of vagrancy (1964),16 and Anthony Platt’s The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency (1969).17 I should also add, in this respect, the early work of feminist critics, such as Carol Smart’s Women, Crime and Criminology: A Feminist Critique (1977),18 which addressed the assumed inferiority of women (as, perhaps, others among others) in criminological thought. These accounts challenged positivist criminology by focusing on the social structure, on class conflict and interests, and on gender and racial stratification. The historical omission of gender in theories of deviance is the reason this topic is not developed in this book, which is driven by the canonical texts in mainstream Western criminological thought. However, it is vital to acknowledge this body of criminological scholarship, which established an alternative to the common assumption of otherness in the field. I shall return briefly to this body of work in the final chapter. 102

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What is interesting to note is that at the time, the critical paradigm in criminology was not alone in challenging positivist criminology and the idea of the offender as other. In fact, critical criminology has had a non-​obvious ally in this respect: neoclassical theories and, to a lesser extent, administrative criminology. Coming from the other side of the political spectrum (that is, the conservative right), this paradigm reinserted the idea of offenders as rational actors, scaling down the idea of delinquent pathology. Moreover, as the research focus in criminology moved to questions of operational efficiency in the criminal justice system, the dominance of positivist criminology faced a challenge. In this respect, the next chapter examines to what degree the production of criminological knowledge remained a criminology of the other.

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Managing the Other: Otherness in Practice As we saw in Chapter 2, the classical school in criminology came out of the Enlightenment, and by the late nineteenth century it had been superseded by the positivist school. By the late 1960s, and even slightly before, classical criminology was making a comeback –​or at least, a comeback in criminological knowledge production, though not with respect to its influence on penal jurisprudence and the criminal justice system, which never discontinued. Interestingly, this resurgence of classical thought and influences –​as we discussed, for example, with respect to David Matza’s work –​guided a growing body of criminological research that sat more comfortably on the political right (specifically, the law-​and-​order doctrine and liberal political economy). In this chapter, we shall see how such research led to neoclassical theories and a growing orientation toward administrative criminology. This body of work challenged positivist criminology insofar as it reinstated the idea of offenders as rational actors, scaling down the idea of delinquent pathology. This developing paradigm in criminological knowledge production also pointed to growing reservations about the tireless positivist effort to explain the causes of criminality, and instead promoted operational research to improve efficiency in the criminal justice system. This chapter focuses on this paradigmatic shift, which I call the managerial movement; it is also referred to as the effectiveness movement (Clear, 2010: 3). This movement, which has been dominant in the field of criminology since the 1970s,1 has placed scholarly priority on the relevance and optimization of policy. More precisely, in contrast with the positivist–​aetiological school’s insistence on explaining crime, 104

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for the managerial movement crime is a given:2 it does not need to be explained, only to be managed. As a result, the orientation of criminological research shifted toward meeting specific quantifiable objectives in the form of pragmatic evidence-​based research (‘What works?’). To quote James Q. Wilson, one of the luminaries of the managerial movement: It [causal analysis] means little for policymakers concerned with crime prevention since men cannot be changed. … [Causal analysis] operated by and large within an intellectual framework that makes it difficult or impossible to develop reasonable policy alternatives and has cast doubt, by assumption more than by argument or evidence, on the efficacy of those policy tools, necessarily dealing with objective rather than subjective conditions, which society might use to alter crime rates. (Wilson, 1974: 5, 8, 9) And from Alfred Blumstein, another figure we shall meet later in this chapter: Much of criminology involves research into the behaviour of individuals. … Many criminologists are quite content to stop there, informing their colleagues about their findings or building on the work of others to advance the state of the science. I do not stop there; rather, I have sought to apply my criminological knowledge to improve policies, particularly those associated with the choices made within the criminal justice system. (Blumstein, 2011: 475–​476) As I asked at the end of Chapter 5, the return of classical thought and the managerial movement raise questions as to whether, or to what extent, criminological knowledge continues to be a criminology of the other. The present chapter aims to answer this question. As shall be seen, I conclude that otherness remains the central theme of criminological knowledge, but in a different form: otherness in practice.

The managerial movement: an overview Neoclassical thought and the rise of the managerial movement The socio-​historical background to the return of classical thought in the form of neoclassical theories and the rise of the managerial 105

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movement is a turbulent one. In many ways the transition is similar to that which took place in the late nineteenth century, when the positivist school pushed aside the classical school and became the dominant paradigm in criminological knowledge production. In both cases, the paradigmatic shift was triggered by a crisis in the criminal and penal systems, which opened the path to new forms of knowledge. In the 1970s, it was the positivist school that was under attack for lacking effective tools to cope with a set of formidable challenges, particularly in the United States: a spike in crime rates,3 race riots in major urban centres across the country,4 the perceived failure of rehabilitation programmes,5 and dramatic prison revolts.6 This new knowledge included neoclassical theories in the form of deterrence theory, routine activities theory, and rational choice theory, which joined other forms of conservative scholarship, often collectively known under the terms ‘law-​and-​order approach’ to crime control and ‘just deserts’ penology.7 All of these approaches shared the notion that crime is an act of free will, and therefore demands a response that manifests both retribution and deterrence (Henry and Lanier, 2009: 72). Garland, if we remember, locates neoclassical theories within the paradigm of the criminology of the self, which de-​dramatizes crime and sees it as an ordinary form of activity that anyone might potentially engage in (1999: 354). Others have defined these as ‘decision-​based theories of crime’, highlighting these theories’ shared assumption that criminal activities are a matter of choice, which clearly sets them apart from positivist explanations of crime (Paternoster and Fisher, 2017: 174). Two major articles published toward the end of the 1960s herald the emergence of neoclassical thought in criminology. The first was a paper by Gary Becker, the Nobel laureate economist, titled Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach,8 which echoes the title of Beccaria’s book. In it, he objected to the assertion that offenders are driven by any sort of pathology, as the positivists would have it. Rather, he argued that they operate from personal motivations, just as people are motivated by personal considerations when contemplating any economic activity. In Becker’s view, the motivation to engage in crime or lawbreaking differs from more normative motivations only insofar as they differ in the benefits and costs that must be taken into account (Becker, 1968; Paternoster, 2010: 675). The second landmark paper was by the sociologist Jack Gibbs.9 Gibbs was less concerned with the economic side of the calculation, and more interested in evaluating 106

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the effectiveness of forms of punishment (Gibbs, 1968; Paternoster, 2010: 675). Yet he reached a similar conclusion to Becker, one which reaffirmed classical thought: namely, that offenders are rational actors, and that the criminal justice system should address and even exploit this rationality (Paternoster, 2010: 675).10 Raymond Paternoster defines this moment (that is, the publication of these studies) as the rekindling of deterrent theory and of research into the deterrent effects of legal sanctions (2010). This (old-​) new conceptualization of the factors motivating offenders, and therefore of the causes of crime, challenged the positivist version of offenders’ otherness, and specifically its foundation in pathology. That is, the idea that criminals are rational agents who act of their own free will contravened the notion that they are deficient, and therefore different, in some capacity (whether biologically, psychologically, or due to defective socialization). In particular, it put a check on the search for social pathologies, which represents the conservative tendency of this approach. This is not to say, however, that neoclassical thought abrogated otherness entirely. Rather, otherness in neoclassical thought echoes that which we saw in classical thought; namely, an otherness based on different rationality and a utilitarian perspective. If we remember, the ‘others’ for Beccaria were those who, for lack of understanding of liberty, act against the social contract. In other words, they act irrationally because they do not accept the utility and necessity of this social arrangement. In neoclassical thought, too, the offender differs from the non-​offender in their use of reason. They, the offenders, calculate the costs and benefits of their actions differently, which sets them apart from the normative group. Neoclassical theory was soon absorbed into the managerial movement, and it was the latter that would come to shape and define otherness in criminological knowledge in the last quarter of the twentieth century and into the twenty-​first. Yet this new form of otherness was not totally incompatible with the classical/​neoclassical and positivist modes of otherness. This will become clearer in the course of our discussion. A broad umbrella The new agenda of the managerial movement in criminology, with its focus on relevance and optimization of policy, gave priority 107

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to administrative criminology with a focus on policy outcomes (Newburn, 2011: 505). As such, positivist aetiological knowledge was pushed aside by predictive, risk-​oriented rational choice models (2011: 506). Yet the movement’s methodological toolkit was not wholly supplanted. It was the aetiological objective that was cast aside, not scientific positivism as the methodological core of research in the field. Administrative criminology used –​and has continued to use –​positivist scientific methods in order to advise legal and justice institutions, with the aim of helping make law enforcement and the administration of justice more efficient (Koehler, 2015: 514). One might even define this as neopositivist criminology: a system that continued to rely heavily on positivist methods, but for administrative purposes and not aetiological ones. What is a particularly interesting aspect of the managerial movement is its dominance, which was such that it even managed to bring these two traditionally competing schools of thought, the classical and the positivist, together under one roof. That is, the classical and the positivist schools in criminology, which historically and epistemologically were intellectual rivals, jointly contributed to knowledge production under the managerial umbrella, and specifically to the overall managerial objective of applied knowledge. In any case, neopositivism was introduced to criminological research in the late 1960s alongside the neoclassical perspective, as a new brand of scholars began to take interest in the field and won governmental support (Feeley and Simon, 1992: 454). Where criminologists of the positivist school tended to have backgrounds in fields such as sociology and law, this new group of scholars came from disciplines such as systems theory, operations research, and economics. Yet the real shift from aetiological to administrative criminology took place in the 1970s, a result of the social and penal crisis already briefly discussed above –​much as the social and penal crisis of the 1890s led to the rise of the positivist school in criminology (Garland, 1985b: 117). In the US, the UK, and (to a lesser or delayed extent) other developed nations, the 1970s saw the most significant structural transformation since the Industrial Revolution, a crisis of capital accumulation coupled with an energy crisis. These developments invited new modes of social organization and production based on deregulation of capital markets, decline of the welfare state, and deindustrialization and outsourcing, or, as it is often called, globalization. Unsurprisingly, the structural transformation of the 1970s also had a profound impact on crime and 108

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crime control (as seen in, for example, the rising crime rates, race riots, and prison revolts mentioned earlier).11 And, as already noted, a growing sentiment asserted that aetiological–​positivist scholarship lacked the answers to deal with such crises, and that it was time for a new form of knowledge. This was the catalyst for the managerial movement in criminology.

Looking deeper: historical origins and development of managerialism Managerial thought, or managerialism, has deep historical roots in modernity and in humanism, though one might say it turned its back on its humanistic origins in leveraging its methods to work toward instrumental goals, particularly increasing productivity. In a sense, managerialism is a logical development in modernity. Modernity is synonymous with the desire to control nature; managerialism is a cluster of concepts that expand this desire to the social realm. It is a movement to eliminate uncertainty and replace it with stability, predictability, and precision. As Yehouda Shenhav puts it, ‘Managerial rationality is a powerful mode of thought and code of conduct in the modern world. … it offers a clear vision of social order’ (1999: 1). The history of the managerial movement is also rooted in political economy, and to a transformation in American industry between 1889 and 1932. It signified the demise of ‘family capitalism’ and the rise of the professional class –​the paid managerial class (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005: 59). In this respect, the motivation behind the movement was the desire to control production and labour. In particular, the aim was to transfer the knowledge of production from the worker or artisan to capital itself, or to a narrow and elevated class of professionals, by replacing the individual with a set of standardized systems (Shenhav, 1999: 4). Alongside the political-​economic motivations, a crucial development in the history of the managerial movement was the emergence of management science as an academic field in the first decades of the twentieth century (Shenhav, 1999). The founding father of management science was Frederick Taylor, whose 1911 monograph The Principles of Scientific Management became a landmark work in the field. The motivation of management science was to make production more efficient by rationalizing workflows. Epistemologically, it is based 109

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on the idea of closed systems; that is, a belief that the systems under review exist outside any socio-​political realm. Managerialism and management science were initially adopted by private corporations in the early decades of the twentieth century. Governmental institutions followed. Thus, the application of scientific management, particularly systems theory and operations research, progressed from business administration to the military (particularly during the Second World War) and, in the 1960s, to domestic public policy, including criminal justice policy (Feeley and Simon, 1992: 454). In fact, it was scholars from fields directly related to scientific management who first framed the institutions of law enforcement, courts, and punishment as a ‘system’, as in the phrase ‘criminal justice system’, which they helped popularize (Feeley and Simon, 1992). For these scholars, this term captures the idea that all the entities involved in enforcement and punishment (the police, judiciary, and so on) should work together toward a common objective, and that all should promote an efficient and effective mode of operation (Feeley, 2003: 119). A key marker in the development of the managerial movement was the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (informally known as the President’s Crime Commission or simply the Katzenbach Commission), created in 1966 by President Johnson. The task of the commission was to study the US criminal justice system –​and to recommend means of repairing it. The appointment of the President’s Crime Commission not only signifies the ascension of managerialism and systems analysis in criminal justice policy, but also the growing leadership of a new brand of scholars. As the first rigorous setting in which operations research was applied to criminal justice, it opened the gate for a new wave of criminological research based on this paradigm, whose products soon began appearing in respected criminological academic journals. In fact, most of the personnel in the President’s Crime Commission were not experts in systems analysis, but rather liberal lawyers aided by researchers schooled in penal welfarism (Feeley, 2003: 118–​119). Yet the influence of those few who came from this new field, with a different methodological toolkit, would take hold in criminology.12 The new brand of scholars who came to represent the managerial movement in criminology actually consisted of two main groups: one group which came from operations research and related fields, and another which came from economics. The leading figure in the 110

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first group was Alfred Blumstein, who in 1967 left a position at the Institute for Defense Analysis to direct the Science and Technology Task Force of the President’s Crime Commission. He described the tasks of the commission in this way: to deal ‘with the key parts of the system –​police, courts, and corrections –​and with an additional task force on assessment concerned principally with crime measurement’ (Blumstein, 2018: 271–​272; emphasis added). He goes on to write that the ‘potential applications of contemporary information and electronic technologies is considerable, especially for assessing risk and needs of identified offenders’ (Blumstein, 2018: 271–​272; emphasis added). Note how, early on, Blumstein both relates to the different criminal justice subsystems and the task of measurement, and gives priority to the task of identifying and managing risk. Later, I shall discuss in more detail Blumstein’s influence and the central role that risk prediction would acquire. The second group, the economists, was, as we have seen, closely related to the rise of the neoclassical school in criminology. Prominent among them were scholars such as Gary Becker and Isaac Ehrlich. Another central figure in this group was John DiIulio, who rather forcefully argued that ‘criminal justice is a field that needs to be conquered by economists’ (1996: 3). The economists differed from the operations researchers in that their methodology does not adhere to controlled research; yet both groups have shared a strong commitment to empirical evidence-​based research. In this respect, both scholarly groups have shown a strong commitment to scientific positivism. Moreover, what bound these two groups together from the beginning was a shared weariness with, and to some extent even disdain for, what they regarded as purposeless aetiological research. In this respect, DiIulio bluntly states that he ‘would most definitely rather be governed on crime policy by the first 100 names in the local phone book than by the first 100 names on the membership roll of the American Society of Criminology’ (The Washington Post, February 26, 2001: C2; quoted in Laub, 2004: 16). What also helped to elevate the managerial movement’s influence on criminology were two canonical texts published in the mid-​ 1970s: Robert Martinson’s study ‘What works?’ (1974) and James Q. Wilson’s book Thinking About Crime (1975).13 Martinson’s study was commissioned in 1966 by the New York State Governor’s Commission on Criminal Offenders, which tasked him with reviewing over 230 previous studies on prisoner rehabilitation programmes. Its gloomy 111

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conclusions –​that ‘nothing works’ –​were already available in 1970. Yet in that year, rehabilitation was still at its height, and the findings were suppressed. The study was finally published in 1974, by which time the political culture had shifted, and Martinson’s conclusions were embraced by conservative policy makers eager to ride a populist wave against public spending on ineffectual programmes for ‘bad’ people. Wilson’s Thinking About Crime, published in 1975, became an instant best-​seller, and certainly the most widely distributed popular book on the subject (Platt and Takagi, 1977: 2). In it, Wilson called for a rational crime policy that would be based on crime-​specific planning, situational crime prevention, and the use of cost–​benefit analysis (Feeley, 2003: 120). It quickly won the ear of conservative public administrators and politicians, from local police chiefs to the White House. Thinking About Crime became the bible of managerial criminology, with Wilson as its high priest (Feeley, 2003). All told, as the movement became more dominant in criminology, the previous concern with root causes, social problems, and individual needs –​based on aetiological positivist knowledge –​was replaced by a growing focus on costs, pricing, penal consequences, and effective disincentives (Feeley, 2003: 130). In particular, with the costs of criminal justice procedures and institutions becoming an explicit feature of policy debate (Feeley, 2003: 115), the orientation shifted to meeting specific quantifiable objectives in the form of pragmatic evidence-​based research. Evidence-​based research sought to perfect criminal justice processes by incorporating quantitative scientific methods that could identify potential offenders and reduce recidivism by predicting future behaviour (Kehl and Kessler, 2017: 7–​8). In this respect, risk prevention became one of the most prominent ‘evidence-​based’ practices of ‘offender management’ (Hannah-M ​ offat, 2016: 33; Kehl and Kessler, 2017: 7–​8), using enforcement tools such as predictive policing and facial recognition under the rubric of ‘crime science’. Despite the attack on aetiological research, it continued to play a role in knowledge production in criminology under the management movement, albeit in a different form and capacity. To begin with, as I suggested earlier, administrative criminology and ‘crime science’ are also based on a positivist, or rather neopositivist, methodology. More deeply, both branches of positivist criminology, the aetiological and the administrative, share the same epistemological conception about the ontological closure of the observed system. Moreover, 112

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both firmly advocate scientific objectivity and oppose normative value judgements. Both branches, in other words, share the belief that scientific knowledge holds the key in dealing with crime while denying their own ideological foundations. For its part, the positivist–​aetiological school responded to the new spirit set out by the managerial movement with a type of theoretical reorientation, evolving in order to remain relevant under the new thinking. At the basis of this shift was the integration of sociological orientations with psychological approaches. Here we can include Ronald Akers’ work on social learning theory,14 in which he extended the sociological core of the theory (first articulated, if we remember, by Sutherland and Cressey) to incorporate behavioural psychology, and Robert Agnew’s theoretical expansion of strain theory 15 (originally Merton’s), which takes into account psychological stress. Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi’s general theory of crime, briefly mentioned in the last chapter, also falls into this category. In it, they revise Hirschi’s 1969 social control theory with a psychological account of personality development, particularly with respect to self-​control.16

From control to prediction Overall, then, the managerial movement, at least at first, did not so much replace the classical and positivist schools as synthesize them, bringing them together under one umbrella while reshaping them to fit the new objective of applied knowledge. Garland, if we remember, defined what I term applied managerial knowledge as a ‘culture of control’ (2001). As he argues, classical criminology of the self, which de-​dramatizes crime (making it a rational act that might be performed by anyone) and positivist criminology of the other (which sees crime as caused by an individual pathology) are integrated under a shared new emphasis on control (1999: 354). Classical thought, via neoclassical theories, served as the foundation for research on deterrence and routine activity. Routine activity theory regards crime as an ordinary activity –​a probable outcome of any scenario which includes all necessary ingredients (an offender, a target, absence of a guardian or audience, props, and so on). Thus, the most effective way to reduce crime is to reduce opportunities for crime. This body of work shared the managerial movement’s impatience with policies and knowledge that fail to have any real 113

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effect on crime. Here is Marcus Felson, arguably the central figure behind routine activity theory: The criminal justice system increasingly spends billions of dollars and yet leaves us with little more than a sense of futility. U.S. society has obviously failed to grapple with and solve its festering crime problem. Nor can we claim that criminology as a field knew all along what to do, if only people listened. (Felson, 1994: xi; emphasis added) For its part, as we have seen, aetiological positivist research shifted its orientation from forms of social deprivation (or relative deprivation) to a focus on social control deficits (Garland, 1999: 353). It aimed, for example, to identify risk factors for criminal behaviour –​whether by delinquent youth or career criminals –​that could inform and shape policy. Yet scholars working from the neoclassical and positivist perspectives in criminology were not alone in shifting their focus toward practical solutions to the problem of crime. Other mainstream criminologists took it as their mission to produce knowledge that was oriented toward policy rather than merely aetiological understanding. The University of Pennsylvania’s cohort study, published in the early 1970s (Wolfgang et al, 1972), was an important milestone in this respect. Interestingly, the authors themselves state explicitly that their project is not aetiological (1972: 4, 253). Arguably, as the managerial movement was in its infancy at that point, the authors felt a need to justify their non-​aetiological orientation: ‘Although we have no data which may be called etiological, we may at least suggest that the strength of these interrelationships among the various background and delinquency variables is sufficient to permit our discussing some appropriate implications’ (Wolfgang et al, 1972: 253). To be sure, cohort research was not new in 1970. Such projects date back to end of the nineteenth century (Wolfgang et al, 1972: 5; Tracy et al, 1990: 5) and continued in the twentieth century –​for example, the Cambridge-​Somerville Youth Study in the late 1930s.17 But those earlier cohort studies were primarily retrospective. Nineteenth-​century research was conducted in the context of degeneration theories (that is, research into biological factors, particularly as they pertain to heredity; see Chapter 3), and the Cambridge-​Somerville study was primarily concerned with personal and social conditions that were considered to elicit crime. By contrast, 114

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the 1972 cohort study was prospective as opposed to retrospective (Tracy et al, 1990: 8), with the aim of determining how criminal behaviour could be predicted (and therefore prevented). In the spirit of the evolving managerial movement, the authors also emphasized efficiency as a central goal: ‘We have generated a model for prediction of future delinquency at specific points in time, and we have produced findings from which efficient timing of interventions schemes might logically be inferred’ (Wolfgang et al, 1972: 255; emphasis added). The University of Pennsylvania’s study covered 9,945 boys from Philadelphia, all born in 1945. Of these, according to the findings, only 627 (6 per cent) ‘fall into the category of chronic recidivists. … these 627 alone were responsible for more than half of the total number of offenses committed by the delinquent group’ (Wolfgang et al, 1972: 105). Thus, the findings suggest that only a small percentage of individuals are responsible for the lion’s share of crime, making it both economical and highly efficient to focus on early detection and prevention within this group. The authors of the cohort study called for more research on recidivism, desistance,18 and intervention programmes; but the main path toward effective control was the prediction of risk. Toward this end, the study offered a scoring system –​ a weighted delinquency index, intended not only to represent the distribution of recidivism, but to predict it. The findings of the 1972 cohort research stimulated the appetite for prediction. Indeed, the idea that a small fraction of arrests targeting recidivist adolescents could contribute disproportionately to reducing the crime rate was most appealing, particularly to conservative scholars, who attempted to replicate and develop it. The 1972 cohort study was repeated in 1977 for boys born in 1958 (Tracy et al, 1990: v), and other studies followed. In 1995, DiIulio could report that: This ‘6 percent do 50 percent’ statistic has been replicated in a series of subsequent longitudinal studies of Philadelphia and many other cities. It is on this basis that James Q. Wilson and other leading crime doctors can predict with confidence that the additional 500,000 boys who will be 14 to 17 years old in the year 2000 will mean at least 30,000 more murderers, rapists, and muggers on the streets than we have today. (DiIulio, 1995: 26) These sorts of findings gave a significant boost to a research paradigm aimed at reducing crime through prediction and prevention, including 115

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studies on desistance and prevalence, and a general focus on recidivism. In particular, it paved the way for a resurgence of interest in research on career criminals –​and for government action. In 1974, President Gerald Ford directed the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) to develop a programme that would concentrate prosecutorial resources against habitual offenders: The Career Criminal Program is based upon the theorem that a relatively small group of offenders commit a disproportionate large number of serious offenses. Therefore to reduce the occurrence of serious crimes while at the same time making more effective use of the limited resources of the criminal justice system, repeat offenders should be identified quickly, prosecuted without unnecessary delays and ‘incapacitated’ for substantial periods by incarceration. (National Legal Data Center, 1977: 1) Alfred Blumstein, who we remember from the President’s Crime Commission, played a central role in advancing the career criminal paradigm, particularly through his work, with colleagues, on the criminal career construct, defined as ‘the longitudinal sequence of offenses committed by an offender who has a detectable rate of offending during some period’ (Blumstein et al, 1988: 2). Blumstein’s contribution to administrative criminology is extensive, including data and measurements related to onset (when and why people start offending), persistence, desistance, deterrence, and incapacitative effects (Piquero et al, 2007: 16). We can include in this respect his work on the ‘flow through the system’, an interactive simulation model that analyses the movement of offenders as they are processed by the justice system, and the associated costs and allocated resources (Cassidy, 1979: 353–​354). The criminal career paradigm shifted the focus from deterrence to incapacitation –​essentially, getting criminals off the streets. As such, it also brought with it a high concern with costs. This was the logic behind the push for developing policy tools that would concentrate penal resources selectively on the small group of serious habitual offenders, with the goal of achieving a significant reduction in crime rates with minimal funds and effort (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990: 259). This policy, based on research efforts in the 1980s, came to be known as selective incapacitation, in that it aimed to select offenders who represent the greatest risk to society –​that is, those identified 116

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as having the highest potential for future serious offending –​and incarcerate them for longer periods of time (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990: 257, 265; Piquero et al, 2007: 16, 17). It should be clear that the increasing punitiveness in penal policy toward serious offenders was driven mainly by penal populism, but in terms of academic knowledge, research on incapacitative effects, based on systemic managerialism, was the most influential in this respect (Newburn, 2011: 505). Under the doctrine of selective incapacitation, punishment –​if we should continue to call it that –​is determined not with respect to the offence, or even to the character of the offender, but according to the risk that the offender may impose on society in the future. As such, selective incapacitation called for increasing incarceration periods for the most serious offenders, while at the same time reducing sentences for low-​r isk offenders (Feeley and Simon, 1992: 458). Malcolm Feeley and Jonathan Simon (1992) dubbed this penal paradigm the new penology. The new penology seeks to regulate levels of deviation within society, but not to respond to individual deviations or social defects. In other words, in the new penology the objective is not to change the offender, whether through rehabilitation or any other intervention intended to address the causes of offending or delinquency. Later, we shall see how, while this new paradigm no longer adheres to the notion of the pathological other implicit in aetiological positivist criminology and penal welfarism, it introduces a new type of otherness in criminological knowledge: what I call otherness in practice. But before we discuss this new form of otherness, we must bring our story up to date –​into the era of big data and algorithms.

Big data and algorithms The desire to predict risk –​or dangerousness, as it was referred to by the Italian school (see Chapter 3) –​has a long history in criminology. But under the managerial movement, it received particular attention. Clearly, no programme of selective incapacitation could work without accurate measurement. To implement such a programme effectively, the justice system must obtain knowledge that can predict with great accuracy who is likely to put society at risk (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990: 258). Casting the net too wide will capture those likely to be serious offenders, but also many others, at a high cost in both resources and morality. Narrowly restricting the sample reduces the chance of overwhelming the system with small fish, but at the cost of missing 117

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some high-​value catches. Thus, we can understand the motivation of scholars within the managerial movement to move toward new forms of knowledge. It is interesting, in this respect, to consider how Blumstein defined the construct of the criminal career. As he put it, the ‘model or construct of the criminal career is not a theory of crime. … Rather, it is a way of structuring and organizing knowledge about certain key features of offending for observation and measurement’ (Blumstein et al, 1988: 4; emphasis added). Obviously, this definition echoes the general spirit of the managerial movement, but there is more which is specific and illuminating. The fact that Blumstein’s contribution is not a theory but, rather, a way to organize data signifies a new mode of knowledge production, one that would ultimately come to rely on big data analysis and algorithms. Nor should this surprise us. If the organization of knowledge and not theory is the goal (and, indeed, theories are not an objective of the managerial movement), it is reasonable to pursue the most advanced methodologies to do so. By the mid-​1980s, before terms like ‘big data’ and ‘algorithms’ were in common parlance, risk assessment had become the dominant paradigm in criminology, first in developed Western nations, particularly in the US, and then in numerous countries around the world. The paradigm was more formally known as risk factor prevention, and ‘risk prevention’ became almost analogous to crime prevention. Clinical risk evaluations (assessments performed by professionals such as psychiatrists or psychologists, social workers, or correctional staff) date back to the early twentieth century. However, clinical knowledge increasingly came to be regarded as unreliable. Clinical knowledge, it was argued, was based on the aetiological training of these professionals, who then used it selectively. Moreover, the decisions taken by these professionals came to be regarded as being too subjective, and hence inaccurate and ineffective (Simon, 2005: 397). As we remember, for risk-​based policies to work, accuracy is crucial. Thus, with pressure from the managerial movement, new forms of knowledge and methodologies for risk evaluation were sought. The managerial movement promoted evidence-​based research for identifying risk. This approach sought to integrate positivist–​ aetiological knowledge –​namely, factors which are the basic variables of such research (for example, demographic data such as age, gender, class, and race; pathological conditions such as personality disorders or substance abuse disorders; and personal history factors, such as family 118

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environment, victimization, or criminal history) –​with statistical calculation and prediction. This evidence-​based risk assessment is then used to assign offenders a risk score (high, medium, or low). As we saw above, the University of Pennsylvania’s 1972 cohort study was the first to employ such a weighted delinquency index. At first, weights were assigned to fixed or ‘static’ predetermined individual risk factors; later, dynamic factors (that is, any criteria that can change over time, such as age, employment status, treatment, or rehabilitation) were included as well. By the 1990s, both static and dynamic factors were included in actuarial modelling. This progress toward more and more sophisticated sources of knowledge represents the logic of the managerial movement. Its emphasis on policy relevance, efficiency, and accuracy is at the heart of this evolution. From this perspective, applying and implementing algorithms as a source of knowledge, once this technology was available, was the obvious next evolutionary step, especially in light of the growing belief that crime could be effectively controlled by incapacitating a small group of habitual serious criminals. Thus, the continued effort to improve accuracy and efficiency in risk assessment pushed developers to go beyond existing actuarial modelling and adopt the emerging new technique of algorithmic data analysis, with the aim of achieving accurate predictive knowledge devoid of any subjective bias. With this end in mind, criminal justice researchers came together with computer scientists and software engineers to develop machine learning algorithms that could, in theory, predict an individual’s potential for offending based on vast quantities of data. As a result, today, in the third decade of the twenty-​first century, risk assessment is increasingly transitioning to algorithmic and big data analysis (Kehl and Kessler, 2017; Hannah-​Moffat, 2018; Mehozay and Fisher, 2019). We now find algorithmic knowledge in an assortment of criminal justice decision points and courses of action, including predictive policing, algorithmic patrols, pre-​trial (bail) decisions, sentencing, and parole decisions, to name just a few. While employing algorithms was a natural progression under the logic of the managerial movement, it does represent a crucial point of departure with respect to the history of criminological knowledge production. As we have seen, up to that point classical and aetiological positivist knowledge had been part of the managerial movement. From an epistemological perspective, algorithmic risk assessment (ARA) represents a final break from aetiological–​positivist knowledge, and the 119

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idea that criminality is caused by some sort of pathology. Pathology, we should remember, is a tool for explanation; so is rationality –​or the lack thereof. Algorithmic knowledge is arguably the final step in the managerial transformation from aiming to understand crime by asking ‘why’ to asking only how to control it. The underlying idea behind ARA is that by harnessing the ability of algorithms to amass and process vast quantities of data covering diverse variables, we can predict human behaviour better than by collecting and processing data based on variables derived from theoretical models (that is, social academic research) (Mayer-​Schönberger and Cukier, 2013; Fisher, 2022). For this reason, ARA can be based on a multitude of data sources, rather than specific data based on aetiological–​ positivist criminological research, such as that which serves even the most sophisticated actuarial model. Moreover, where social theories aim to be parsimonious, algorithmic data is omnivorous, meaning it can be expanded indefinitely, absorbing more data as the calculation continues. As such, the size of the population on which the data are built can grow and grow and it is infinitely greater than in any previous risk assessment tool, including the actuarial models. The transition to algorithmic knowledge has two important corollaries. First, as the sole end goal of ARA is prediction, it is simply left to the algorithm to uncover patterns in the data (Mehozay and Fisher, 2019: 534). In keeping, as long as the prediction of the ARA is accurate –​or rather, as long as it is accepted as accurate (or at least more accurate than other risk evaluations) –​it is not obliged to be empirically defensible (Hannah-​Moffat, 2019: 6). Thus, algorithms often operate as a black box, meaning it is impossible to explain how a risk score was deduced (Pasquale, 2015). The second corollary is the loss of reflexivity in knowledge production. This is a major difference compared to the two traditional epistemes in criminology to this point: the classical and the positivist. To different degrees, both the classical and the positivist schools of thought aimed at effecting change, and not just understanding. For both there is a gap between the deep structure of the self (utopian, desired, ideal) and its surface phenomena (actions, and specifically criminal activities) (Mehozay and Fisher, 2019: 538). This gap is an opening for change. The classical school aims to shape behaviour by promoting rationality; the positivist school aims to do so by addressing the relevant pathology (for example, via deterrence or treatment, respectively). This objective is lost with algorithmic knowledge. 120

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With algorithmic knowledge, prediction is everything; there is no theoretical foundation and no gap between a humanistic conception of personhood and the risk result. Indeed, we only have the risk result. Any other consideration –​humanistic, criminological, or penological –​is pushed aside.

Otherness in practice This review of the recent history of criminology and criminal justice (administrative criminology) does not represent all forms of knowledge production in the field during this time. Yet the gradual application of algorithms represents the overall logic and direction of the managerial movement. With this in mind, my objective in focusing on this particular narrative is to highlight the development of a new form of otherness, one which has the potential to become all-​consuming. As I have discussed, the road toward this version of otherness, notwithstanding its deeper historical roots, began somewhere in the late 1960s with neoclassical thought and, even more so, with the managerial movement. James Q. Wilson, describing addressing the concept of delinquency as articulated by the main mid-​twentieth-​ century positivist criminologists (for example, Sutherland, Cressey, Cohen, Miller, and Cloward and Ohlin), highlighted what he saw as the shortcomings of their version of otherness (that is, otherness as subculture; see Chapter 5), which was based on social dynamics. He argued that such explanations could not provide any substantial foundation for public policy, which, for Wilson, makes them obsolete. If anything, he writes, ‘it directs attention away from factors that government can control’ (Wilson, 1974: 1). With this, coming from a different direction (the pursuit of applied knowledge with practical effectiveness), Wilson is dismissing the idea of the pathological other. Yet importantly, he did not reject otherness in practice –​something which would become institutionalized following his work and that of others like him. Cohort studies and the criminal career paradigm further pushed in that direction by emphasizing prediction, making it almost the only thing that matters. What do I mean by otherness in practice? From the perspective of knowledge production, as the management movement does not seek to explain the aetiology of crime, it is also not concerned with personhood as it had previously been understood. Yet the managerial movement does operate from a certain conception of personhood, 121

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what we can call ‘managerial’ personhood or, today, the algorithmic self (Mehozay and Fisher, 2019). The algorithmic self represents an episteme of selfhood distinct from the two previous dominant epistemes in the field of criminology: the rational self and the pathological self (for the classical and positivist schools, respectively). As we know, following the premise of the rational self, crime is taken as an act by a rational, free-​willed autonomous person based on logical calculations. For its part, the pathological self sees crime as induced by some deviance, disease, or fault, whether internal or external (social, psychological, and so on). While the epistemes of the rational self and the pathological self are conflicting, they do share an important commonality, in that both start from the vantage point of an explicit conception of personhood, one marked by a gap between different dimensions of the self –​between a deep structure of the self and the surface manifestation of action. This, in turn, allows subjectivity, reflexivity, and, more to the point, change. The algorithmic episteme stands in stark contrast, even opposition, to those previous epistemes. To begin with, the algorithmic self aims to create knowledge about individuals free from preconceptions. It is wholly agnostic about the ontological status of offenders (Mehozay and Fisher, 2019: 528). More precisely, the knowledge produced by ARA takes the form of a score, a calculation, often based on a black box, which gets its meaning from a practice (that is, a policy –​remember, explanation is not an objective of this knowledge). Indeed, the result and the policy attached to it are almost tantamount to the same thing. There is no theory which informs the policy in a process of translation. As such, it excludes reflexivity and thus any intention toward change in the form of self-​correction (Mehozay and Fisher, 2019). All of this points to a distinct version of otherness. It should be stressed that the implications of this development, the ascension of the algorithmic self, are not theoretical. As Kelly Hannah-​Moffat observed, we are now at a point where an algorithmic risk result ‘is itself being used as “evidence” ’ (2018: 12). This result, moreover, may lead potentially to a permanent condition –​remember, the episteme of the algorithmic self does not involve the possibility of change. A person’s risk score becomes their identity for all penal purposes –​even, it could be argued, for all purposes. One caveat is called for here. This book, for the most part, does not trace the history of penological policy. Criminological knowledge, not policy, is our focus. From a policy-​alone perspective –​or from 122

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the perspective of criminological knowledge translated into policy –​ otherness in practice is certainly not new. Offenders throughout the ages have had to grapple with the sense that once behind bars, they are nothing but a number. Yet now, this statement is also true with respect to criminological knowledge. The type of knowledge produced –​the subject of inquiry of this book –​now also assumes this type of otherness. Looking more broadly at the historical arc of modern criminological knowledge, we might even say that in a sense, perhaps without intention, with otherness in practice we are completing a full circle back to Lombroso, hard determinism, and even the idea of the born criminal. The high-​r isk offender is, of course, not considered a born criminal, a conception which is based on theory and the pursuit of causality. But in practice this could very well be the outcome. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine that risk scores could be used to exclude offenders from liberal penal practices, leaving them to be managed by enemy penology (see Chapter 3). I shall discuss some of the implications of this observation, and others, in the final chapter.

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Conclusion: A Science of Otherness? The objective of this book has been to contribute a reflexive analysis of modern Western criminology, focusing on knowledge production rather than criminological and penal policy. More precisely, I have aimed to reconstruct the ideology –​as ‘science’ of otherness –​as a principal theme in the history of knowledge production in Western criminological thought. Throughout the book, I have discussed different versions of otherness that have served as ideological points of departure for various schools of thought and paradigms in the field, and explored the co-​constitutive evolution of knowledge production in modern criminology and ideological variants of otherness in relation to the socio-​historical context. As such, while this book did not intend –​and indeed, could not have tried –​to capture the full rich, layered body of criminological knowledge, I believe it does have something to say about the essence of the field. This book has reread the history of Western criminology, not as mere knowledge that aims to explain criminal behaviour based on quantifiable methods, or even to perfect criminal jurisprudence and practices, but also as an apparatus to inscribe, reproduce, and legitimize a certain social structure. Arguably, in this respect criminology is no different from any other discipline in the social sciences. Yet without going into comparisons, we should acknowledge the often purposeful direction of criminological knowledge as applied knowledge (‘science for life’s sake’, as Ferri wrote (2004 [1901]: 35)). As such, its ideological foundations play a significant function as an instrument of power. Lest we despair, I end this chapter by pointing to a growing body of work that offers a promising alternative direction for knowledge 124

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production in criminology. First, though, let us briefly look back, and summarize how we have got to where we are.

A science of otherness: summary and recapitulation In developing a theory of knowledge based on the concept of otherness, this book has extended David Matza and David Garland’s depiction of positivist criminology as constructed from ideas of difference and pathology (Matza, 1964) and as a ‘criminology of the other’ (Garland, 1996, 1999, 2001). The ideology of otherness asserts a discourse of responsibilization in which the fault for social unrest lies with some problematic ‘other’ rather than with the social structure and its hierarchies. It is thus not by coincidence that modern criminology is represented by the birth of Homo criminalis, and the idea that the offender is fundamentally different from –​and in binary opposition to –​the ‘normal’ or ‘normative’ non-​offender. I developed and stretched the concept of otherness beyond positivist criminology, applying it to additional paradigms, namely the classical and the managerial. I attempted to make the case that while the phenomenon of othering is clearly not equivalent for the three paradigms, it is still an overarching ideological principle for modern criminology as a whole –​an a priori conception, motivation, and often conclusion for knowledge produced by criminological scholarship. One might argue that the dynamic described here excludes classical thought: the criminology of the self, which assumes that offenders are people ‘just like us’ (Garland, 1996: 461) –​that each and every human being carries the potential to offend. But I find this argument to be incomplete. The differentiation between populations and social groups is endemic to the classical school as well. Classical jurisprudence and practice rest on an ability to decide who is included in the social contract and who is not. Put bluntly, an ideological foundation that asserts and justifies exclusion of the other is what allowed classical thinkers to speak in universal terms. We should not forget that classical thought arose at a time when slavery and the colonial project were expanding. Otherness, in this capacity, was an enabler that bridged the dichotomy between Enlightenment ideals and the practices of colonization and slavery. The organizing principles of the Enlightenment were allocated to a limited social group while everyone else was excluded –​and not just residents of the colonies, but also the urban poor of the metropole. The ideology of otherness thus 125

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legitimized the practice of circumscribing the ‘universalist’ classical principles of the Enlightenment. Moreover, Chapter 2 in this book locates dimensions of otherness in classical thought. To briefly recall, following Piers Beirne (1993), I note the early indications of Homo criminalis in classical writings. We find a preliminary notion of offenders’ separateness in Beccaria’s work, and a more developed one in Bentham’s science of pain, in which offenders’ individualization is particularly expressed in how different measures of pain are needed to deter different offenders from repeating the same crime. Even more telling is Beccaria’s understanding of the ‘dangerous classes’ –​those whose poor understanding of liberty (that is, whose different rationality) leads them to act against the social contract. Beccaria’s expressions speak to his comfortable blindness to the fact that most of those labelled as ‘dangerous’ were not party to the social contract in the first place. In this respect, modern penal codes and practices, which were founded on classical thought, perpetuate the bias against a particular social class, which has been disproportionately represented in and targeted by the carceral system ever since. We should remember that, by and large, positivist criminology never defined criminality, and thus followed the penal code that was founded on classical thought. Hence, when positivist criminology studies criminal behaviour (the behaviour of someone who breaks the law), it incorporates and follows the classical bias against people of lesser means as constituted by penal jurisprudence. In Chapter 2, I titled the disconnection between universalism and the practices of exclusion as an ideology of an imaginary bourgeois society. By that, I meant the belief that a social order by and for a small group of privileged people actually applies to the entire populace. In reality, it required ways to justify the exclusion of the many from the bourgeois socio-​political project. Thus, for example, the perceived need to distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving poor. This logic, implemented in the Poor Laws, is similar to the colonial logic of the time. In both, it is about separating those who are deemed qualified and worthy to enjoy the ‘universal’ perks of the system from those who, for some reason, are not. As I wrote at the end of Chapter 2 and in Chapter 3, with the Industrial Revolution progressing and its impact more noticeable, there was a growing need for a different way of bridging over the contradiction between the idea that ‘all men are created equal’ and how things really functioned. Instead of a regime of exclusion directed toward the undeserving, defined as those who freely and wilfully chose 126

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an injurious course of life, an alternative disciplinary mode of control was sought. If we remember, I borrowed Foucault’s conceptualization to define this transition as a shift from the classical sovereignty, a mode of control aimed just at preserving authority, to the positivist disciplinary mode that aimed to reform those it controlled (Foucault, 2007). The positivist mode of control advanced the idea of the pathological self, which, as we know, asserts that human behaviour and activity is determined by internal and external forces. In its early stages, positivist ideology was based on a biological–​medicalized discourse, mainly on degeneration theories. The idea of pathology assumes a fundamental difference at the level of body and mind that set the pathological other apart from normal people. The pathological other needed to be treated and, if possible, reformed; until such time as that could be accomplished, the idea that these others might deserve equal treatment would have seemed absurd. What did not change in the transition from classical to positivist thought was the responsibilization discourse, in which the cause of social degradation lay not in the social structure and system that enabled it, but somewhere else –​on the already marginalized population. The ideology of otherness was most overt in the early, though rather long, phase of positivist criminology, which roughly continued until the third decade of the twentieth century. It was not just that positivist criminology –​unlike the classical school –​focused on the offender, rather than the offence, but the way in which positivist criminology conceptualized the offender. Positivist criminology articulated a full-​fledged Homo criminalis –​effectively, another way to define the pathological self –​with a set of unique characteristics, separating this personage from the normative population. The offender was assumed not just to be intrinsically different from the non-​offender –​an other –​ but to be inferior. The features that differentiated the offender from normative society were degenerative traits. This belief –​the dominating epistemological core of positivist criminology for many years –​ presumed and promoted the idea that social problems in the form of unwanted activities (delinquent behaviour) result from uncontrolled actions by segments of the population affected by degeneracy. In this respect again, the ideology of otherness served to bridge the gap between liberal–​universalist thought (‘all men are created equal’) and the grim social reality. It was assumed that degenerative pathology was what prevented these others from taking a healthy and equal part in society. Moreover, suffering from pathology, they 127

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put a toll on society; they needed special treatment and care –​or, for those who could not be reformed, separation from honest society through some form of population management. As noted, all of this was part of a greater body of knowledge asserting the degeneration and otherness of segments of the lower classes. This type of knowledge suited social elites, as it legitimized the social hierarchy by shifting responsibility for societal ills onto the socially disadvantaged. Individual pathologies led to social problems, rather than the other way around. The idea of otherness was pervasive throughout this period, so much so that what drove the development of positivist knowledge was the quest to locate the source of difference. At first, as we know, the body was the locus where pathological differences were to be found. Biological differences, saturated in racial bias, were used as signals of pathological differences. In this respect, the determinism of the idea of the racially inferior echoes the determinism of the idea of the ‘born criminal’. The conceptual line connecting the criminal to the colonial and enslaved other is apparent. The colonial and enslaved other served as a blueprint for the concept of otherness. Their racial differences were seen as emblematic of an intrinsic inferiority, reflecting an unequal distribution of intellectual capacity and development. The ‘civilized’ European can grow in cultural refinement; the colonial other remains ‘barbaric’, animal-​like, dominated by raw instinct and violence. In this respect, the urban poor were treated as akin to the savage barbarians of the colony. Indeed, if we remember, offenders were depicted as more similar to ‘Hottentots and other black-​skinned primitives than to normal white people, with their well-​evolved moral sense’ (Rafter, 2011: 151; see Chapter 3). But the idea of the ‘born criminal’ also asserted the presence of difference even if it was invisible. Indeed, Lombroso maintained that criminality might be hidden; and Raffaele Garofalo argued that ‘one could be criminal without having committed any crime’ (Horn, 2003: 11; see Chapter 3). This notion, if we remember, goes back to the idea of moral insanity (see Chapter 3). And thus, the task of the science of otherness was to find the invisible pathological difference and make it visible. Put differently, criminal behaviour had to be conditioned by some type of pathological othering, and the task of the researcher was to find and highlight it. Thus, when the body was exhausted as a repository for difference, then other venues were pursued: the mind, the social environment, and culture. 128

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Otherness thus remained the foundational theme of positivist criminology even as the production of aetiological–​p ositivist criminological knowledge progressed, long after the school’s early phase. What changed was the location of the pathology. The cause of otherness moved outside the body and the mind; hard biological and racial differences based on nature gave way to softer, less deterministic explanations based on culture. Cultural degeneracy, in one form or another, became the core explanation of criminal behaviour beginning with the Chicago School, though its roots are even earlier (recall that the difference between offenders and non-​offenders was perceived as being not in kind but only in degree at least since Charles Goring’s work). Cultural otherness was based on theories and dynamics which found expression in the grand sociological theories in criminology: learning and social interaction theories, disorganization theory, and subculture theory (discussed in Chapter 5). In different capacities these sociological theoretical explanations pointed to some form of what I defined as cultural–​historical atavism, or in C. Wright Mills’ term, cultural lag, meaning the idea that the problematic social group in question is stuck at an earlier culturally evolutionary stage. The gap between the cultural evolutionary stages was taken as the source of otherness. In general, positivist knowledge of otherness offered, from its early days, a new version of penology that, it was believed, could remedy the failures of the classical deterrence economy and the problem of recidivism (see Garland, 1985b). If offenders are pathologically driven to crime, then it is clear that they cannot be controlled through rational forms of deterrence. Instead, as we know, positivist penology asserts that punishment, if we should still call it that, should be tailored to the offender and not the crime. As such, the criminal must be either treated through rehabilitation and reform, or placed under some programme of protective separation from society –​including, as we saw, eugenic programmes for reproductive control. Positivist penology advocates two modes of control, not mutually exclusive –​namely, care and containment, which represent two modes of authority toward the other: authority for and authority over the other (see Chapter 4). If we remember, authority for the other points to a welfarist penology, whereas authority over the other indicates forms of containment, exclusion, and even eugenic control. Authority for the other stems from a softer etiological determinism based on sociological approaches. Delinquency, in this respect, follows cultural explanations, 129

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and it adheres to what I termed modernization theory (again, see Chapter 4). Accordingly, the pathology is not fixed, but changeable through proper acculturation and education (an echo of the colonial ‘White Man’s Burden’). Penologically, it promotes intervention programmes and indeterminate sentencing. Authority over the other, by contrast, follows a conception whereby the delinquent pathology is beyond remedy, such that correction is simply not an objective (thus, it suits classical forms of penology as well). This also means that otherness is a source of risk that must be managed if society wishes to protect itself. Accordingly, under this view, penal knowledge and policy must focus on the offender’s potential to harm in the future, as opposed to punishing him for an injurious act committed in the past. These ideas of dangerousness and risk became central themes in modern criminological knowledge and penology. The last version of otherness covered in the book (Chapter 6) is otherness in practice –​an outcome of otherness produced by administrative knowledge as a result of the managerial paradigm in criminology. This form of otherness is directly connected to the premium placed on controlling risk. This, and the transition in focus from aetiological knowledge to applied knowledge, has produced knowledge as risk prediction that asserts certain offenders as others. For managerial knowledge, the objective is not to explain or understand crime and criminal behaviour, or even to effect behavioural change. Rather, the only objective is to perfect and improve the efficiency of crime control often by reducing risk –​and so the only relevant knowledge is one’s risk score, an opaque proxy for identity that is increasingly based, as we saw, on algorithmic computation. This knowledge represents the person in question to all penal purposes and even beyond that. Hence, otherness in practice. Arguably with no intention to do so, this type of advanced knowledge production may complete a full circle back to hard determinism, with the ‘algorithmic self ’ replacing the ‘born criminal’ of the Italian positivist school.

General thoughts on modern Western criminological knowledge As I have mentioned several times, this book does not cover all the knowledge produced in the field of criminology; not even close. Yet I do submit that it engages with the central paradigms of modern Western criminology, particularly that produced in the US. As such, it 130

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seems legitimate, in this final chapter, to offer some general thoughts about the crux of the field. To be sure, my critical account of the ideology of otherness as a central theme in the history of criminological knowledge production is not intended to be an indictment against past scholars, who were people of their times, and who lived within certain cultural and cognitive constraints. Indeed, many of the scholars whose work I have reviewed were progressively advanced for their time, and I do not question their motives or intentions. I do, however, question the socio-​ political context, the ideological foundations, and the deeper meanings and implications of their scholarship. My intention is to advance our understanding so that we can reflect on the field of criminology and to help elevate our awareness and reflexivity, both for those who produce and for those who consume criminological knowledge. First and foremost, the co-​constitutive association with the ideology of otherness has contributed to a condition in which a good part of knowledge production in criminology seems to focus on studying the symptoms of social problems –​that is, the manifestations of criminality. Much less attention, to the point of outright omission, is given to social structural explanations for criminology, and to the crucial question of how, and by whom, deviant behaviour is defined in the first place. In terms of aetiological–​positivist criminology, manifestations of criminality have been taken as evidence that something is wrong with the people committing crime. This wrongness –​this ‘otherness’ –​ was understood as the reason criminals break the law. Following this logic, it was the task of the researcher to explain the reason for their otherness, because explaining that would explain crime. This ideology of otherness stands in the way of a capacity to see that there is in fact nothing extraordinary about crime. To paraphrase one more time C. Wright Mills, how could a phenomenon that is so widespread be ‘abnormal’ (1943: 174)? Moreover, think about the implications of this knowledge. If the focus of study is the symptoms of social problems, then by extension any efforts to address these problems will also focus on their symptoms. And this is so regardless of whether crime is seen as biologically or culturally driven. In other words, attempts to control criminal behaviour will only ever address factors at the level of the individual, whether these are internal (for example, personality, mental illness) or external (social and cultural). This is true even with respect to the most progressive approaches by people who truly wish to help and care for 131

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the less fortunate members of society. Anything outside individualist or community intervention such as, for example, addressing the nature of post-​industrial capitalism, systemic racism and xenophobia, the divide between the Global North and the Global South, and so on –​ are considered to fall outside the scope of criminological knowledge and research. Thus, we are left, and this is in the best scenario, with well-​ intentioned and admittedly paternalistic programmes to help those unfortunate others. In this respect, I am reminded of an allegory that Stanley Cohen, following C. Wright Mills, once shared (1994: 236), which he used as a way to highlight the difference between addressing social problems as ‘private troubles’ or as ‘public issues’. I am taking artistic freedom with the original allegory because I wish to use it as a way to also highlight the difference between progressive and radical modes of criminological thought. The story goes as follows: A man is walking by a riverside when he notices a body floating downstream. The man (in the original allegory it is a fisherman) leaps into the river, pulls the body ashore, and performs mouth-​to-​ mouth resuscitation, trying desperately to save the drowned man’s life. A few minutes later another body floats by, then another, and then another, until they are coming every few minutes. Each time, the man jumps into the water, pulls the body out, and repeats his futile exercise. Another man passing by sees what is happening, and starts running upstream. The first man shouts after him, ‘Hey! Why aren’t you helping me rescue these people?’ To which the second man replies, ‘I’m going upstream to find out who the hell is pushing these poor folks into the water’. The bodies in the water represent the symptom in this allegory. And while people in need must be helped or saved, this does not address the core problem –​figuring out who, or what, is pushing people into the water. The would-​be rescuer who keeps jumping in may be well-​ intentioned and even a hero, but in addressing only the symptom –​to spell out the analogy, helping (or controlling) a troubled (or dangerous) other –​he risks allowing or even helping perpetuate the condition that is responsible for the plight in the first place. This narrow perspective, which in focusing on controlling crime actually treats the symptoms of social ills, also characterizes the classical and the managerial paradigms in criminology. In both cases, as we know, the question of what causes criminal behaviour is irrelevant, and the concept of pathology is foreign. What is essential is the criminal 132

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act and the form of control over the offender. Yet the socio-​political context is ignored by these paradigms, often even more than in the case of positivist criminology. The rather sterile social world of liberal–​ classical thought, or the neo-​Durkheimian managerial conception in which crime simply exists in any society, both leave room only for knowledge of social control. As such, othering is accomplished through applied knowledge, to the point that with risk prevention models, certain offenders are utterly demonized as predatory others. All told, throughout its existence, criminological knowledge –​ informed by the ideology of otherness –​has helped legitimize and sustain the social hierarchies of industrial–​capitalist societies. By and large, such knowledge has not challenged the social structure in any meaningful way. On the contrary, it has rationalized it, transferring responsibility to people with lesser means. Thus, in many respects modern criminology has served to strengthen mechanisms of social control, not challenge them. The ideology of otherness has been a powerful and successful justifier of our rigid social stratification insofar as it has served as a counterweight to egalitarian ideology. In other words, it has legitimized inequality in an era when, to be seen as just, the socio-​political system must adhere to egalitarian principles. The ideology of otherness navigates this contradiction by being attuned to modern sensibilities, and negating egalitarian demands through the language of science –​the science of otherness. All this having been said, and stepping for a moment outside our discussion of the ideology of otherness, the idea that scientific knowledge can resolve social problems is misleading. While science has great capacity to provide solutions to technical questions and challenges, we cannot simply translate this to the realm of socio-​ political problems. The idea that social challenges can be miraculously solved by evidence-​based research is either a theological aspiration for a modern version of salvation, or a fabrication (perhaps more charitably: self-​deception) aimed at reducing the price we must pay when sharing political space with others. Social problems are by and large the product of social constructions; they are not technical. As such, resolving social problems requires social compromise –​a willingness to sacrifice one’s own interests, resources, and comfort in order to reduce the despair, anxiety, strain, fear, and resentment experienced by fellow people. While efforts to achieve social compromises may benefit from empirically tested positivist knowledge, what they really require is willing human agency –​political will and action. 133

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Criminology is a field that deals above all with social problems. As such, its knowledge should be directed toward social compromise. In this respect, we should think about criminology not as knowledge in the service of control, which legitimizes the rule of some over others, but as knowledge that aims to support compromises between fellow members of society. So what might this knowledge look like?

A way forward? Knowledge for social compromise Knowledge for social compromise demands open communication between all members of society. One compromises with one’s fellow, as opposed to imposing a solution either over or for the other. Hence, knowledge for social compromise cannot be knowledge of otherness. Instead, those who have been traditionally regarded as problematic others to be studied, controlled, and cared for must be active parties in defining the questions and the objectives of the research. Knowledge for social compromise is bottom-​up knowledge, as opposed to the top-​down knowledge of otherness.1 Such alternative knowledge production should start with a shift in focus. The starting point should be neither the concerned observer nor the ‘problematic other’, but the problems faced by real people, as communicated by them. It thus requires a different mode of categorization, and different questions, which should emerge directly from those who are going to benefit from this knowledge. In this respect, we can think of knowledge based on inclusive ethnographic scholarship or action-​based models (Mehozay, 2018); that is, knowledge produced by social movements, activists, and non-​professional grassroots actors. There are also some educational programmes that reverse the process by which one learns about the troubling or troubled other. Instead, the ‘others’ themselves teach the students, through initiatives that bring individuals with direct and personal carceral experiences into classrooms (Harm and Bell, 2021). It should also be clear that when we speak about social problems and challenges, those who have been traditionally defined as ‘normal’ or ‘normative’ are very much part of the problem. For a moment in the late 1960s, it seemed this was finally being recognized: ‘What white Americans have never fully understood –​but what the Negro can never forget –​is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it’ (The Kerner Report 1968, see National 134

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Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders 2016: 2). Interestingly, this acute observation did not come from radical criminologists, but from an unexpected source: mainstream politicians and high-​level law enforcement operatives who served on the commission established by then-​President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the causes of urban riots in the US during the late 1960s. But the echo of this important statement was short-​lived. In general, critical, radical, abolitionist, and, to a lesser extent, feminist perspectives have also been marginalized, such that while some of this scholarship might be highly respected, it has had little effect on mainstream criminology. In the late 1960s, a body of critical analysis, which was influenced by social movements and political struggles (against the Vietnam War, racial inequality, colonialism, and more), emerged as radical criminology. Radical criminology, following a Marxist tradition, distinguished itself from earlier critical voices in criminology, such as labelling theory and even conflict theory, by committing to a serious examination of power dynamics, based on the class divide, and by focusing on crimes of the powerful, including state crimes.2 Indeed, whereas conflict theory remains within the liberal tradition, and is based on a constructionist (labelling) definition of crime (that is, crime is whatever the agencies of the criminal justice system officially define as crime) (Bernard, 1981: 371), radical criminology was directed by a Marxist understanding, and thus rejected the definition of law and crime proffered by the state or the capitalist social stratum. This critical perspective guided the alternative focus of radical criminology, not only with respect to questions about the definition of crime, but in dealing with ‘crimes of exploitation’, ‘crimes of racism’, ‘crimes of sexism’, and ‘crimes of imperialism’ (see Krisberg et al, 1974). At the heart of this body of work was a rejection of criminology as the study of problematic or dangerous others in the service of the state and social order. Radical criminology replaced the deviant other with the state, the social structure, and social institutions as the thing that needs to be studied. Rejection of otherness, albeit from a different perspective, is found in early feminist work, which debunked residual Lombrosian notions of intellectual atavism and other ideas that women are more emotional or neurotic –​ideas that once governed criminological thought (Downes and Rock, 1998: 303) –​ and placed gender bias, inequality, and the patriarchal social structure at the centre of criminological investigation. The now canonical book The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance (1973), by 135

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the founding members of the National Deviancy Conference,3 Ian Taylor, Paul Walton, and Jock Young, was an additional important milestone in rejecting the positivist doctrine of otherness. For those scholars, criminology is ‘not simply the study of some marginal, exotic … group’.4 All told, while it has often been marginalized, critical and radical criminology continued to develop an analytical toolbox based on questions about gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, social class and colonialism, thereby turning the critical gaze from those who were historically and traditionally objectified as problematic to those who have been doing the objectifying. In sum, in order to develop knowledge for social compromise we first must dismantle the robust legacy of the knowledge of otherness. This is happening through the ongoing work of critical and radical criminologists, whose scholarship not only deconstructs the dogma of otherness, but also points to more egalitarian forms of knowledge, which are critical to support social compromise. In this respect, we find new abolition and critical carceral studies, which continue in the path of radical criminology inasmuch as they seek to expose the ‘operations of settler colonialism, racial capitalism, hetero-​patriarchy, and ableism’, and which are committed to developing alternative knowledge that can deconstruct formerly ‘unchallenged carceral logics’ (Brown and Schept, 2017: 451). Moreover, and highly significant for our purpose, this alternative knowledge is based on the voices of those who have been historically and traditionally silenced; those who have been spoken over or spoken for. In the words of Michelle Brown and Judah Schept, this new abolition and critical carceral research ‘emanates from experiences, practices, and movement-​generated theories grounded in survivability’ (2017: 443). Before closing, I wish to briefly mention two additional promising perspectives that have emerged over the last two decades: first, decolonizing criminology, which includes Indigenous criminology (for example, Agozino, 2003, 2004; Cunneen and Tauri, 2016; Goyes and South, 2017; Moosavi, 2018; Dimou, 2021; Aliverti et al, 2021); and second, Southern criminology (for example, Carrington et al, 2016, 2018; Carrington and Hogg, 2017; Ciocchini and Greener, 2021). Decolonizing criminology begins with the recognition, also expressed in this book, that there is a connection, even a deep one, between modern criminology and criminal law, on the one hand, 136

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and forms of imperialism on the other (Aliverti et al, 2021). As such, criminology must recognize its deeply rooted legacies of colonialism, slavery, and systemic racism in order to be able to move beyond these ‘embedded patterns of power’ (Dimou, 2021: 431). Decolonizing criminology thus invites us to embrace epistemic points of view (Dimou, 2021: 440) that shun the Western logic of separation, which has been used to rationalize the modern West’s grand political projects, among them slavery and colonialism. Indigenous criminology, as part of the decolonization of criminology, also calls for disconnecting the question of crime from the logic of separation, emphasizing the importance of including more diversified voices, such as those found within Indigenous communities (Aliverti et al, 2021: 308). Decolonizing criminology, in this respect, seeks to embrace different geographies that lead to new knowledge. ‘The “decolonial option” invites us to think what a history of criminology might look like if the starting point of its enunciation was not England, France and Italy, but Haiti, Mexico or Senegal’ (Dimou, 2021: 443). Moving outside the West (or the Global North) into alternative geographies is a theme shared by Southern criminology. Southern criminology stems from a pushback against the power inequality and the almost one-​directional flow of knowledge between the Global North and the Global South. This alternative paradigm seeks to give voice to excluded agencies, epistemologies, categorizations, and questions coming from outside the hegemonic Global North. Joining with the decolonizing criminology perspective, it asserts that knowledge of the Global North has its roots in colonialism and exclusion via delegitimizing social thought coming out from the Global South (Dimou, 2021: 432). This book drew analytical inspiration from this body of alternative and critical knowledge with the intention to elevate reflexive self-​ examination of the history of the field of criminology. While it is not entirely part of the emerging decolonization and Southern scholarly traditions, the book does see them as a path forward toward an egalitarian and emancipated alternative to criminology as a science of otherness. My hope is that the book will contribute to opening conversations toward inclusive patterns of knowledge production for social compromise.

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Notes Chapter 1 1

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4 5

6

7

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9

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Throughout this book I largely do not distinguish between criminology and penology. I more or less follow in this respect Edwin Sutherland’s definition, in which ‘criminology is the entire body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon. It includes within its scope the process of making of laws, of breaking of laws, and the society’s reaction towards the breaking of laws’ (1947: 1). Within that broad definition, penology is more properly the study of the punishment of crime; hence, society’s reaction toward the breaking of laws. Throughout this book, for simplicity, I will occasionally use the word ‘criminology’ alone (in phrases such as ‘knowledge production in criminology’ or ‘criminological knowledge’). Whenever I do this, it should be understood that I mean Western or US criminology. Examples include the tradition of the Frankfurt School or Gustav Bergmann’s The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism (1954). One can also list, inter alia, Thomas S. Kuhn (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, and Bruno Latour (1993) We Were Never Modern, Harvard University Press. Howard S. Becker (1967) ‘Whose side are we on?’ Social Problems 14(3): 239–​247. It goes without saying that this book is not intended as a substitute for an introductory textbook. That work also raises the question, who counts as a criminologist? In response it details the contributions of administrators and field professionals to criminological and penal knowledge. The present work does not engage directly with this question. The Borstal system was a set of reform schools for delinquent youth aged 16–​21. It borrowed its name from the first of these institutions set up on a large scale, established in 1901 in Borstal, Kent. www.newyork​ er.com/​books/​page-​tur​ner/​stu​art-​hall-​and-​the-​r ise-​of-​cultu​ral-​ stud​ies Originally this concept was used to explain how a scientific discourse had replaced a theological discourse in explaining the existence of social injustice. Theodicy deals with the question of how or why an all-​good, all-​powerful God would permit the existence of evil. I am referring to two emerging critical paradigms, decolonizing criminology with Indigenous criminology (to name a few, Agozino, 2003, 2004; Cunneen and Tauri, 2016; Goyes and South, 2017; Moosavi, 2018; Dimou, 2021; Aliverti et al, 2021) and, Southern criminology (to name a few, Carrington et al, 2016, 138

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2018; Carrington and Hogg, 2017; Ciocchini and Greener, 2021). I discuss them in more detail in the last chapter of the book.

Chapter 2 1

2 3

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6 7

David Garland argues that the scholars who are considered the founding fathers of the classical school of criminology should be regarded more as legal scholars who applied their ‘legal jurisprudence to the realm of crime and punishment’ (1985a: 14; see also Unger et al, 2018: 15). See also Gibson, 2002; Garland, 2002. Besides Beccaria and Bentham, discussed in this chapter, notable scholars of the classical school include Sir Samuel Romilly (Britain), John Howard (Britain), and Paul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach (Bavaria). The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1865) states a similar connection, in which it is only through the application of punishment that slavery or involuntary servitude may be permitted: ‘Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.’ That said, some argue that Beccaria did not believe in mild punishment even for minor crimes, and that his stance against the death penalty was not based on opposition to its cruelty, but on a belief that a sentence of slavery was more severe and thus more effective as a deterrent (see Newman and Marongiu, 1990: 336, 338). Montesquieu and Rousseau also had great influence on Beccaria’s thought. These ideas go even further back, to Locke’s sense impressions (Jenkins, 1984: 115).

Chapter 3 1

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Comte himself did not claim originality for positivism. Rather, he considered Bacon, Descartes, Galileo, and particularly Newton (who all made many real contributions to science) as the founders of the positivist philosophy. See www. victor​ ianw ​ eb.org/​phi​loso​phy/​comte.html (accessed 7 September 2020). Comte also acknowledged building on numerous other influences: the empiricism of Locke, the scepticism of Hume, the sensism of Kant, and the philanthropy of Saint-​Simon, to name a few. See www.newadv​ent.org/​cat​hen/​123​12c.htm (accessed 1 September 2020). For more, see Ron Weber (2004) ‘Editor’s comments: the rhetoric of positivism versus interpretivism: a personal view’, MIS Quarterly: iii–​xii. It was not Galileo’s discoveries but his methodology –​his use of a scientific tool, the telescope, to verify his hypotheses –​which was the profound revolutionary moment from which modern science arose. See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, p 261. Jason Storm goes so far as to argue that the word ‘myth’ applies both to the idea of disenchantment as a defining aspect of modernity in the Western world, and to the supposed dominance of the scientific worldview that came in its wake (Storm, 2017: 5). 139

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https://​victo​r ian​web.org/​phi​loso​phy/​comte.html. For more, see Joseph Henry Allen (1880) ‘The religion of humanity’, Unitarian Review and Religious Magazine 14: 51–​60; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​entr​ies/​ comte/​#SysP​osPo​lCom​Pos Today, we no longer associate positivism with politics, but the connection existed from the outset when Comte served as secretary of Saint-​Simon (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). I will discuss Gall and phrenology at length shortly in this chapter, along with the other theories and developments mentioned here. This was also asserted earlier by Arthur Fink (1938). As it was understood at the time. The Dutch naturalist Pieter Camper was another physiognomist. His notion of the facial angle was a combination of comparative anatomy and racial anthropology (see Van Wyhe, 2002: 24). See E. Ackerknecht (1967) Medicine at the Paris Hospital 1794–​1848, Johns Hopkins University Press, p 172. This was largely thanks to George Combe, an Edinburgh lawyer and the third most influential proponent of phrenology after Gall and Spurzheim. John Abernethy, an English surgeon, was active in debunking the main premises of Gall’s theories (much as Goring did for Lombroso’s work, as we shall see later). For example, the great poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was an enthusiastic admirer of Gall’s phrenology. He was also enthused by Lavater’s physiognomy 30 years earlier (see Van Wyhe, 2002: 31). Among other members we can find Rawson W. Rawson (Britain), Joseph Fletcher (United States), Mary Carpenter (Britain), Adolphe d’Angeville (France), and Louis-​René Villermé (France). Comte also used the term social physics (see DiCristina, 2015: 134). The term ‘dangerous classes’ first appeared during the Restoration. It was popularized following Fregier’s (1840) classic study of urban criminality (see fn 8, Beirne, 1987: 1144). Malthus’s ‘Essay on the principle of population’ was among the works that prompted this new thinking. England and Wales began collecting similar statistics in 1876.

Chapter 4 1 2

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I will detail the difference between positive and negative eugenics later in the chapter. That is, followers of Thomas Malthus, the famous British economist and demographer, who is known for his argument that modernization and industrialization would lead population growth to outrun resources, making population management vital. See Francis Galton (1904) ‘Eugenics: its definition, scope, and aims’, American Journal of Sociology 10(1): 1–​25. Gregor Mendel’s basic principles of heredity formed the foundation of the science of genetics. As mentioned earlier, Richard Dugdale’s eugenic case study, The Jukes, was published in 1877, a year after Criminal Man (see Jenkins, 1984: 65–​66). 140

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In this respect, we can recall the words of the US progressive hero Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: ‘Three generations of imbeciles are enough’ (Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927)). See also Simon, 2020. J.W. Slaughter (1911–​1912) ‘Report of the Committee to Consider the Eugenic Aspect of Poor Law Reform. Section I. The eugenic principle in Poor Law administration’, Eugenenics Review 2: 167–​177. This article was later reprinted in Robert Park and Ernst Burgess’s canonical textbook Introduction to the Science of Sociology (1921: 979). As we shall see, Park and Burgess were key members of the Chicago School. He argues the same with respect to the British version of urban ecology propounded by Patrick Geddes. For a review of modernization theory see, for example, Robert M. Marsh (2014) ‘Modernization theory, then and now’, Comparative Sociology 13(3): 261–​283. Shaw and McKay continued the work of Park and Burgess, whose concentric zone model aimed to explain the distribution of social groups within urban areas, with a central business district in the centre and a commuter zone in the outer ring. Mills defines a sufficient evolutionary process as involving a ‘positive evaluation of Science and of orderly progressive change’ (1943: 177). Under George Herbert Mead’s theory of development, delinquent values were thought to be acquired by others through a learning process. Mead’s theory of development would later evolve into learning theory and would influence fellow Chicagoans such as Edwin Sutherland.

Chapter 5 1

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In Chapter 4, we saw that the Chicago scholars adopted Boas’s rejection of the idea of biologically distinct races. Donald Cressey would go on to co-​author six editions of Sutherland’s canonical textbook, Principles of Criminology. Conflict caused by ‘differences in values and beliefs that place people at odds with one another’ (Jonathan H. Turner (2005) Sociology, Prentice Hall, p 87). For more, see Laub, 2006: 236–​237. For more, see Laub and Sampson, 1991. Sutherland apparently asked McKay to point to the pages in the textbook where he found his theory of criminal behaviour (Friedrichs et al, 2017: 35). In the end, empirical research did undermine Sutherland’s grand theory. See Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza (1957) ‘Techniques of neutralization: a theory of delinquency’, American Sociological Review 22(6): 664–​670. It should be noted that for years now, analytic induction has no longer been used in criminological research. Talcott Parsons (1942) ‘Age and sex in the social structure of the United States’, American Sociological Review: 604–​616. Merton posited five types of behaviour based upon (a) people’s adherence to cultural goals, and (b) their belief as to how to attain those goals. The five types are conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion. For more, see Henry and Lanier, 2009: 194–​196. 141

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Frank Tannenbaum (1938) Crime and the Community, Columbia University Press. Edwin M. Lemert, 1951. Tannenbaum, Crime and the Community. Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer (1939) Punishment and Social Structure, Columbia University Press. William J. Chambliss (1964) ‘A sociological analysis of the law of vagrancy’, Social Problems 12(1): 67–​77. Anthony M. Platt (1969) The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency, University of Chicago. Carol Smart (1977) Women, Crime and Criminology: A Feminist Critique, Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Chapter 6 1

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5

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This book analyses theoretical paradigms that advance its analytical interpretation (the ideology of otherness), which necessarily limits its scope. For this reason, and only for this reason, I do not address in this work feminist criminology, which arguably has made the most important contemporary theoretical contribution to the field. For good reviews of feminist criminology see Kathleen Daly and Meda Chesney-​Lind (1988) ‘Feminism and criminology’, Justice Quarterly 5(4): 497–​ 535; Candace Kruttschnitt (2016) ‘The politics, and place, of gender in research on crime’, Criminology 54(1): 8–​29. This conception echoes Durkheim’s well-​known argument that crime is a social fact in any society. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports indicated a tripling and even quadrupling of major crime rates in the United States (see Felson, 1994: xiii). See Kerner Commission (1968) Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Washington: Government Printing Office; Daniel J. Myers (1997) ‘Racial rioting in the 1960s: an event history analysis of local conditions’, American Sociological Review 62(1): 94–​112. See Robert Martinson (1974) ‘What works? Questions and answers about prison reform’, The Public Interest 35: 22; Ted Palmer (1975) ‘Martinson revisited’, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 12(2): 133–​152. For more on the Attica Prison revolt and the San Quentin Six, which sparked a prison riot in 1971, see John Pallas and Bob Barber (1972) ‘From riot to revolution’, Issues in Criminology 7(2): 1–​16; Heather Ann Thompson (2017) Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy, Vintage; Tony Platt (1982) ‘Crime and punishment in the United States: immediate and long-​ term reforms from a Marxist perspective’, Crime and Social Justice 18: 38–​45. See Andrew von Hirsch (1986) Past or Future Crimes, Manchester University Press, ch. 1. Becker (1968). Jack P. Gibbs (1968) ‘Crime, punishment, and deterrence’, The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly 48: 515–​530. Many of the founding works of neoclassical theory in criminology (including articles by Gary Becker and Isaac Ehrlich) are collected in Lee McPheters and

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William Stronge (eds) (1976) The Economics of Crime and Law Enforcement, Charles C. Thomas. For an overview of this literature, see Jan Palm (1977) ‘Economic analysis of the deterrent effect of punishment: a review’, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 14 (   January): 4–​21. See, for example, Malcolm M. Feeley (2003) ‘Book review: Crime, social order and the rise of neo-​Conservative politics’, Theoretical Criminology 7(1): 111–​130; A. De Giorgi (2006) Re-​thinking the Political Economy of Punishment: Perspectives on Post-​Fordism and Penal Politics, Ashgate. Scholars taking a systems analytical perspective were responsible for two task forces within the President’s Crime Commission: the Task Force on Science and Technology and the Task Force on Courts. Prior to their role in the commission, these scholars had been linked to the then Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, and the Institute for Defense Analysis and the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, CA (Feeley, 2003: 119). We shall discuss some of these individuals in what follows. For more, see Feeley, 2003: 119–​120. Ronald L. Akers (1973) Deviant Behavior: A Social Learning Approach, Wadsworth, pp 24–​41. Robert Agnew (1992) ‘Foundation for a general strain theory of crime and delinquency’, Criminology 30(1): 47–​87. Their conceptualization also builds on the classical philosophy of crime. Indeed, their point of departure is a critique of the positivist school’s lack of such a philosophy or conceptualization of crime. In a sense, they offer a synthesis of the classical and positivist approaches. For a review, see Joan McCord and William McCord (1959) ‘A follow-​up report on the Cambridge-​Somerville Youth Study’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 322(1): 89–​96. Generally defined as the cessation of offending or other antisocial behaviour.

Chapter 7 1

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The terms ‘bottom-​up knowledge’ and ‘top-​down knowledge’ are not particularly felicitous as they also indicate bias binary. I use them here only for purposes of clarity. To name a few publications by radical criminologists: Richard Quinney (ed) (1974) Criminal Justice in America: A Critical Understanding (vol 8), Little, Brown and Co.; Richard Quinney (1977) Class, State, and Crime: On the Theory and Practice of Criminal Justice (vol 6), D. McKay Company; Tony Platt (1974) ‘Prospects for a radical criminology in the United States’, Crime and Social Justice 1: 2–​10; William J. Chambliss (1975) ‘Toward a political economy of crime’, Theory and Society 2: 149–​170; Herman Schwendinger and Julia Schwendinger (1970) ‘Defenders of order or guardians of human rights?’ Issues in Criminology 5: 123–​157. A group of British radical and critical criminologists that broke from orthodox British criminology. Foreword by Alvin W. Gouldner (Taylor et al, 1973).

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157

Index References to endnotes show both the page number and the note number (231n3). A Abernethy, John  140n13 accommodation  76, 77 Ackerknecht, Erwin  51 Adler, Mortimer J.  84 administrative criminology  see managerial (administrative of control-​managerial) school of criminology African-​Americans  72, 74, 75, 77 Age and Sex in the Social Structure in the United States (Parsons)  91 ‘age of degeneration’  19, 43 see also degeneration Agnew, Robert  113 Akers, Ronald  113 algorithms  117–​121, 130 algorithmic self  122 Aliverti, Ana  2 American Sociological Association  83 Ancient Society (Morgan)  82 anthropology  biological  56–​59, 61, 66 criminal  52, 56, 59, 60 antisocial personality disorder  50 ARA (algorithmic risk assessment) 119–​120, 122 assimilation  74, 75–​76 atavism  56, 57, 58, 60, 78, 135 cultural-​historical atavism  79, 81, 82, 129 atheism  34–​35 B Bauman, Z.  24 Beccaria, Cesare  19, 25–​30, 35, 36, 37, 39, 50, 106, 107, 126 Becker, Gary  106, 107, 111 Becker, Howard S.  4, 102 behavioural genetics  70 behavioural psychology  113 Beirne, Piers  14, 28–​30, 33, 35, 48, 54, 55, 66, 126

Bell, Alexander Graham  69 Bentham, Jeremy  19, 30–​33, 35, 38, 39, 40, 126 big data and algorithms  117–​121 biological anthropology  56–​59, 61, 66 biological factors, as cause of crime  7, 16, 17, 18, 47, 48, 54, 67, 70, 71, 73–​74, 75–​76, 77, 78, 79, 84, 85, 86, 89, 127, 128, 129, 131 see also degeneration theory; eugenics; phrenology; physiognomy biopower  40 Blumstein, Alfred  105, 111, 116, 118 Boas, Franz  72, 75, 83 Boltanski, L.  11 born criminals  57, 58, 60, 66, 86, 123, 128, 130 Bouie, Jamelle  13, 17 Bourdieu, Pierre  16 bourgeois society, ideology of in classical criminology  33–​41, 126 Brace, Charles Loring  62, 63 Brown, Michael  14–​15 Brown, Michelle  136 Burgess, Ernest W.  75, 87, 141n8 C Cambridge-​Somerville Youth Study  114 Camper, Pieter  140n10 Canada  70 career criminals  116–​117, 118, 121 Causes of Delinquency (Hirschi)  96 Chambliss, William  102 Channing, Ian  1–​2 Chiapello, E.  11 Chicago School  7–​8, 19, 54, 64, 71, 84, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 129 grand positivist sociological theories era  82, 129 and modernization theory  72–​80, 81 ‘neo-​Chicagoans/​second Chicago School’  97 Churchill, David  1–​2 classical school of criminology  2, 5, 6, 10, 14, 19, 21–​22, 125, 126 background  22–​25

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Cesare Beccaria  19, 25–​30, 35, 36, 37, 39, 50, 106, 107, 126 and ideology  33 imaginary bourgeois society ideology 33–​41, 126 Jeremy Bentham  19, 30–​33, 35, 38, 39, 40, 126 and the managerial movement  104, 105, 106, 108, 113, 120 and the positivist school  21, 22 theological approach to law and punishment  33–​34 see also neoclassical theories clinical risk evaluation  118 Cloward, Richard  82, 93–​95 Cohen, Albert  82, 83, 90–​93, 95 Cohen, Stanley  99, 132 cohort research  114–​115, 121 colonial other, the  16, 17, 37, 59, 74, 128 colonialism  16–​17, 37, 61, 74, 125, 126, 130, 137 Combe, George  140n12 commensurability, of punishment  32 Committee to Consider the Eugenic Aspect of Poor Law Reform 1912 (UK)  69–​70 Comte, Auguste  44, 46, 52, 53 concentric zone theory  87 conflict subcultures  95 conflict theory  135 conservatism  35 Constable, M.  10 constructionist theories  18, 19 control and administrative criminology  see managerial movement (administrative or control-​managerial) school of criminology control theory  96 costs, of criminal justice procedures and institutions  9, 112 Cressey, Donald  83, 85, 113 crime  measurement of  111 big data and algorithms  117–​121 political aspect of definition of  101 scientific methods of study of  48–​49 Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach (Becker)  106 Crime, Law, and Social Science (Michael and Adler)  84 criminal anthropology  52, 56, 59, 60 criminal careers  116–​117, 118, 121 ‘criminal justice system’, as a concept  110 Criminal Man (Lombroso)  56, 67, 68 criminal responsibility  25, 60 criminal subculture  95 criminology  definition  138n1 as ideology  3–​5 as otherness  1–​6 criminology of the other  14, 24, 43, 55–​56, 65, 81, 125

criminology of the self  22, 24, 106, 113 Criminology (Sutherland)  84 critical criminology  102–​103 cultural degeneracy  78, 129 cultural divide  88 cultural evolution  82, 83, 129 cultural lag  78, 81, 82, 129 cultural relativism  82–​83 cultural-​historical atavism  79, 81, 82, 129 ‘culture of control’  19, 113 D ‘dangerous classes’  16, 17, 29–​30, 35, 54, 59, 62, 63, 126, 140n17 Darwin, Charles  68, 71 Davie, Niel  47 ‘death of God’  45 decolonizing criminology  136–​137, 138n10 degeneration theory  19, 41, 42, 43, 48, 50, 52, 56, 57, 60, 61, 65, 67, 79, 127–​128 deindustrialization  108 delinquency  classical school of criminology  24, 26 and eugenics  70 and immigration  78–​79 neoclassical theories  8–​9 positivist (positivist-​etiological) school of criminology  7, 43, 44, 50, 64, 79 social disorganization theory explanation of  87–​89 Delinquency and Opportunity: A Study of Delinquent Gangs (Cloward and Ohlin)  93 Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang (Cohen)  90–​91 Derrida, Jacques  90, 93 Descartes, R.  29 Destutt de Tracy, Antoine  45 determinism  34–​35 deterrence theory  106, 107 development, theory of  141n13 deviance, sociology of  5, 102 DiCristina, Bruce  51, 54, 55 Diderot, D.  36 difference/​differentiation  13, 100–​103, 125, 128 differential association theory  19, 78, 82, 83–​87, 90, 91, 94, 100 differential opportunity structure theory  82, 83, 93–​95 Dilulio, John  111, 115 Dimou, Eleni  137 disciplinary power  40 discipline  43 disenchantment  45 disorganization theory  74, 129 dissident positivism  46 drift theory  99–​100 ‘dropouts’  95 due process of law  23 Dugdale, Richard Louis  67–​68

159

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Durkheim, Émile  11 Dyer, Richard  58 E economic positivism  9 economics, and the managerial movement  110–​111 effectiveness movement  see managerial movement (administrative or control-​managerial) school of criminology Ehrlich, Isaac  111 Eknoyan, Garabed  53 empiricism  29 encoding  15 enemy penology  37, 38 English Convict, The (Goring)  66–​67, 69 Enlightenment, the  6, 13, 16–​17, 23, 25–​26, 33, 104, 125 enslaved other, the  16, 128 environmental factors, as cause of crime  18, 34, 76, 78, 80, 88, 90, 92, 98 epilepsy  58 equability, of punishment  32 ‘equality before the law’  36 Etkind, Alexander  17 eugenics  14, 19, 61–​62, 63, 64–​65, 67–​72, 79 eugenic criminology  70–​71 Eugenics Society/​Eugenics Educational Society  69 evidence-​based research  9, 112, 118–​119 evolutionary naturalism  71, 72 evolutionary psychology  70 evolutionary theory  68, 77 Ewald, François  24 exclusion  42–​43 F false consciousness  33, 34, 37 Faris, Ellsworth  73 Feeley, Malcolm  117 Felson, Marcus  114 feminist criminology  102, 135, 142n1 Ferri, Enrico  7, 10, 43, 58, 66, 124 Feuerbach, Pail Johann Anselm von  139n3 Fichte, J. G.  38 Fink, Arthur E.  48 forced sterilization  64, 69–​70, 72 Ford, Gerald  116 Foucault, Michel  16, 40, 43, 74, 127 France  54 French environmental school  66–​67 Idéologues  45 Penal Code (1789)  23 Francis Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics, University College, London  69 free will doctrine  55, 60 Friedrichs, David  84 frugality, of punishment  32 functionalist sociology  91

G Gall, Franz Joseph  47–​48, 51–​52, 55 Galton, Francis  68, 69, 72 Galton Institute  69 Garafolo, Raffaele  128 Garland, David  2, 7, 8, 14, 15, 19, 24, 41, 43, 47, 49, 57, 81, 106, 113, 125 Garofalo, Raffaele  57 Geddes, Patrick  141n9 gender  102, 135, 136 Gibbs, Jack  106–​107 Gibson, Mary  56 Giddens, Anthony  5, 44, 46 Giddings, Franklin  71 globalization  108 Glueck, Elinor  70, 85, 100 Glueck, Sheldon  70, 85, 100 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von  140n14 Goring, Charles  66–​67, 69, 76, 81, 86, 129 Gottfredson, Michael  86, 113 Gotto, Sybil  69 governmentality  16 Greer, Chris  17 Guerry, André-​Michel  53, 55, 56 H habitual offenders  116–​117, 118 Hall, Stuart  12, 15, 17, 56, 58, 93 Hannaford, Ivan  13 Hannah-​Moffat, Kelly  122 Harvard University  85, 91 Helvétius, C. A.  28, 31–​32 Hereditary Genius (Galton)  68 heredity/​heditarianism  48, 49, 50, 56, 58, 65, 67 see also born criminals; eugenics Hirschi, Travis  86, 96, 113 Hobbes, T.  32 Hobsbawm, Eric  40, 42 Holmes, Oliver Wendell  141n6 homicidal monomania  49 Homo criminalis (‘criminal man’)  19, 29–​30, 32, 54, 66, 125, 126, 127 Hooton, Earnest A.  70, 85 Horn, David G.  57, 128 Howard, John  139n3 Hsu, Hua  15 humanism  28, 34, 109 Hume, David  29 Hutcheson, Francis  29 I Idéologues  45 ideology  9–​12 criminology as  3–​5 and the Idéologues  45 immigration  78 and eugenics  69, 72 US  69, 72–​73

160

INDEX

Immigration Act of 1924, US  69 imprisonment  classical school of criminology  26–​27 and eugenics  70–​71 lifetime detention  64, 65 positivist (positivist-​etiological) school of criminology  56 selective incapacitation  116–​117 Indiana University  83, 91 Indigenous criminology  136, 137, 138n10 individualism  32 Industrial Revolution  39, 41, 42, 59, 126 innocence, presumption of  23 Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Bentham)  30 Introduction to the Science of Sociology, The (Park and Burgess)  75, 141n8 Italian positivist school  47, 56–​59, 65, 66, 67, 130

Lindesmith, Alfred R.  85 Locke, John  38–​39 logical empiricism  see positivism logical positivism  see positivism Lombroso, Cesare  47, 54, 56–​59, 60, 65, 66, 67, 68, 123, 128 Lombroso-​Ferrero, Gina  67

J Jeffery, Clarence Ray  46 Jewkes, Yvonne  17 Johnson, Lyndon  110, 135 Jukes, The: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity (Dugdale)  68 ‘just deserts’ penology  106 Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas: A Study of Rates of Delinquents in Relation to Differential Characteristics of Local Communities in American Cities (Shaw and McKay)  87–​89 K Kalyvas, Andreas  11 Katzenbach Commission  see President’s Crime Commission (President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice/​ Katzenbach Commission) Kerner Report, The (National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders)  134–​135 Kirchheimer, Otto  102 Kragh, Helge  47 L labelling theory  96–​98, 135 Laub, John H.  84, 85, 86 Laughlin, Harry  69 Lavater, Johann Kaspar (Caspar)  50–​51 law-​and-​order doctrine  104, 106 LEAA (Law Enforcement Assistance Administration)  116 learning theory  74, 82, 129, 141n13 Lemert, Edwin  97 Levi Strauss, Claude  13 Liazos, Alexander  102 liberal political economy  104 lifetime detention  64, 65

M Malthus, Thomas  140n2 Malthusians  65 management science  109–​110 managerial movement (administrative or control-​managerial) school of criminology  2, 5, 9, 10, 14, 18, 19, 104–​105, 107–​109, 113–​117, 125, 130 big data and algorithms  117–​121 neoclassical thought  105–​107, 111, 114 origins and development of  109–​113 otherness in practice  105, 117, 121–​123, 130 Martinson, Robert  111–​112 Marx, Karl  27 materialism  34–​35 Matza, David  80, 98–​99, 101, 102, 104, 125 Mazumdar, Pauline M. H.  69–​70 McKay, Henry D.  77–​78, 82, 85, 87–​89, 91, 94 Mead, George Herbert  72, 141n13 medical-​biological model of delinquency  7, 47, 67 see also biological factors, as cause of crime Mehta, Uday Singh  61 Melossi, Dario  74 Mendel, Gregor  68, 140n4 mental retardation  58 Merton, Robert  82, 90–​91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 99–​100, 100–​101, 113 methodological atheism  11 Michael, Jerome  84 middle-​class culture  83, 88–​89, 92, 93 Milbank, John  11 Miller, Walter  90 Mills, C. Wright  78, 81, 97, 100, 129, 131, 132 miserology  16, 58 modernity  13–​14, 109 modernization theory  19, 63, 82 moral insanity  48, 49–​50, 128 moral statistics  53–​56 Morgan, Lewis H.  82 Morris, Aldon  74 Morton, Robert  19 Muhammad, Khalil Gibran  12 N Napoleon  45 National Legal Data Center  116 nativist movement  72, 73

161

A SCIENCE OF OTHERNESS?

negative eugenics  68 ‘neo-​Chicagoans’  97 neoclassical school  8–​9, 21, 99, 104, 105–​107, 111, 114 neo-​Lombrosian era  19, 64, 66–​68, 76, 83, 84, 100 neopositivism  19, 46, 108, 112 neutralization theory  98–​99 New Criminology, The: For a Social Theory of Deviance (Taylor, Walton and Young)  135–​136 new penology  117 nullum crimen sine lege (no crime without law) doctrine  23 Nye, Robert  47, 73 O Ohlin, Lloyd  82, 83, 93–​95 On Crimes and Punishments (Dei delitti e delle pene) (Beccaria)  25–​30, 35, 50, 106 operations research  104, 110–​111 oriental other, the  18 orthodox positivism  46 otherness  18 concept of  2 criminology as  1–​6 criminology of the other  14, 24, 43, 55–​56, 65, 81, 125 enslaved other  16, 128 ideology of  12–​18, 125, 127–​128, 133 oriental other, the  18 and positivist (positivist-​etiological) school of criminology  49, 58–​62 positivist school  42–​43, 49, 58–​62, 129 in practice  105, 117, 121–​123, 130 and racism  16–​17 and social hierarchy  15–​16 P pain, science of  31–​32 Park, Robert  73, 75–​76, 76–​77, 87, 141n8 Parsons, Talcott  91 Paternoster, Raymond  107 pathological self, the  6–​8, 107, 127 penal welfarism  8 penology  1, 138n1 positivist school  60–​61 Philosophical Radicals  30–​31, 35 phrenology  14, 47–​48, 51–​53, 55, 56, 61 physiognomy  14, 50–​51, 52, 56 Pinel, Philippe  49 Platt, Anthony  102 Polish Peasant in Europe and America, The (Williams and Znaniecki)  72–​73, 75 Poor Law Amendment Act (1834)  39, 40 positive eugenics  68 positivism  6, 7, 9, 29, 52, 97, 108, 111, 139n1 historical review  43–​47

positivist (positivist-​etiological) school of criminology  2, 5, 6–​8, 9, 10, 14, 18, 19, 24, 41, 42–​43, 125, 126, 127, 128–​130, 131 Albert Cohen and subculture theory  89–​93 biological anthropology, Lombroso and the Italian school  47, 54, 56–​59, 60, 61, 65, 66, 67, 68, 123, 128, 130 Charles Goring and neo-​Lombrosianism 19, 64, 66–​68, 69, 76, 81, 83, 84, 86, 100, 129 Chicago School and modernization theory  72–​80, 82 and the classical school  21, 22 Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay’s social disorganization theory  77–​78, 82, 87–​89, 90, 91, 94 Cloward and Ohlin’s differential opportunity structure theory  82, 83, 93–​95 critiques of  96–​100 definition of  2 and differentiation  100–​103 Edwin Sutherland and differential association theory  19, 78, 82, 83–​87, 90, 91, 92, 94, 95, 100, 101, 113, 138n1 grand sociological theories in criminology  82–​103, 129 individualism  32 labelling theory  96–​98, 135 and the managerial movement  106, 107, 108, 109, 112–​113, 114, 120 moral insanity  48, 49–​50, 128 moral statistics  53–​56 origins and development of  47–​59 and otherness  49, 58–​62 phrenology  14, 47–​48, 51–​53, 55, 56, 61 physiognomy  50–​51, 52, 56 progressive movement  65 poverty  38, 40–​41, 42 and criminality  36–​37 deserving and undeserving poor  38–​39 poverty knowledge  16 power  40 President’s Crime Commission (President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice/​Katzenbach Commission)  110–​111, 116, 135 Prichard, James Cowles  49 Principles of Criminology (Sutherland)  84, 85 Principles of Psychology (Spencer)  52 Principles of Scientific Management, The (Taylor)  109–​110 prisoner rehabilitation  111–​112 Progressive Era  64, 72, 84 property ownership  36–​37, 39 psychiatry  48 psychopathology  50

162

INDEX

punishment  classical school of criminology  23, 26–​27, 31, 53 as deterrence  27, 31 proportionality of  27 utilitarianism  31–​32 Q Quetelet, Adolphe  48, 53–​54, 55, 56 R race and racial groups  38, 55, 56, 58, 75, 134–​135 nativist movement  72 racial bias  128 racial taxonomy  13 racism  137 scientific racism  16, 57, 61 radical criminology  102, 135–​136 Rafter, Nicole  1, 14, 48, 49, 58, 128 rational choice theory  9, 106, 108 rational self, the  6, 8, 23–​25, 40, 107, 122 reflexivity  3–​4 loss of in ARA (algorithmic risk assessment)  120–​121 rehabilitation  8, 111–​112 reproductive control  64, 65 responsibilization  2, 22, 24, 37, 80, 102, 127 retreatist subculture  95 right-​wing perspectives  104 risk assessment and management  112, 118–​121 Rockefeller, John D. Jr.  69 Romilly, Samuel  139n3 Roosevelt, Theodore  69 Rousseau, J.-​J.  38 routine activity theory  9, 106, 113–​114 Ruggles-​Brise, E.  66 Rusche, Georg  102 Rush, Benjamin  49 S Said, Edward W.  17, 18, 64, 74 Saint-​Arnaud, Pierre  73, 74, 75, 76, 77 Sampson, Robert J.  84, 85, 86 Savitz, Leonard  46 Schmitt, Carl  12, 34 ‘science of man’  28–​29 scientific racism  16, 57, 61 scientism  19, 28–​29 Schept, Judah  136 Scottish Enlightenment  28–​29 ‘second Chicago School’  97 secularization  28 selective incapacitation  116–​117 self, the  algorithmic self  122 criminology of the self  22, 24, 106, 113 pathological self  6–​8, 107, 127 rational self  6, 8, 23–​25, 40, 107, 122

sensationalism  29, 32 Shaw, Clifford  77–​78, 82, 87–​89, 91, 94 Sheldon, William  85 Shenhav, Yehouda  109 Simon, Jonathan  68, 117 situational crime prevention  9 slavery  16–​17, 26–​27, 37, 77, 125, 128, 137 enslaved other, the  16, 128 Smart, Carol  102 social bond theory  96 social class  see bourgeois society; middle-​class culture; working class culture social compromise, knowledge for  134–​137 social constructionism  97 social contract  22, 23, 26, 27, 36, 37, 38, 40, 126 social control  11 classical school of criminology  21–​22, 24, 33–​41 and ideology  3 positivist (positivist-​etiological) school of criminology  54, 56 social Darwinism  65, 74 social disorganization theory  77–​78, 82, 87–​89, 90, 91, 94 social ecology theory  19, 54, 64, 71, 74, 84, 94 social hierarchy  132 and the classical school of criminology  22 and otherness  15–​16 social interaction theories  129 social issues, scientific methods of study of  48–​49 social learning theory  96, 113 see also differential association theory social mechanics  54 Social Pathology: A Systematic Approach to the Study of Sociopathic Behavior (Lemert)  97 social physics  54 social reactions theorists  97 social reform, classical school of criminology  23 social variables, and criminal behaviour  7–​8 socialization  97 differential association theory  85, 86 sociology  113 and eugenics  71–​72 functionalism  91 grand sociological theories in criminology era  19, 82–​103, 129 Southern criminology  136, 137, 138n10 ‘Southern Question’, Italy  59 sovereign power  40 sovereignty  43, 127 Spencer, Herbert  52, 71 Spurzheim, Johann Gaspar  51, 52, 55 Stark, Wiliam  30, 31 Staszak, Jean-​François  12 state crimes  135

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sterilization, forced  64, 69–​70, 72 strain theory  19, 82, 90, 91, 92, 94, 99–​100, 100–​101, 113 subculture theories  8, 18, 19, 74, 75, 81–​83, 82, 83, 100, 121, 129 differential opportunity structures theory  82, 83, 94–​95 Sumner, Colin  65 Sutherland, Edwin  19, 78, 82, 83–​87, 90, 91, 92, 94, 95, 100, 101, 113, 138n1 Sykes, Graham  98–​99 symbolic interactionists  97 systems theory  110 T Taylor, Frederick  109–​110 Taylor, Ian  36, 43, 136 theodicy  15, 138n9 theological approach to law and punishment  33–​34 Theory of Legislation, The (Bentham)  30 Thinking About Crime (Wilson)  111, 112 Thomas, William  72–​73, 75 Treatise of Man and the Development of his Faculties, A (Quetelet)  53 Tuskagee Institute  75 U United Kingdom  eugenics  69–​70 penal system  8 structural transformation, 1970s  108–​109 United States  early sociology  71–​72 eugenics  69, 70 historical development of  3–​4 immigration  72–​73 juvenile urban street gangs  82 nativist movement  72 perception of African-​Americans and Southern/​Eastern European immigrants  59 structural transformation, 1970s  108–​109 Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution  139n4 see also classical school of criminology; managerial (administrative of control-​managerial) school of criminology; positivist (positivist-​etiological) school of criminology universalism  42–​43

University of Pennsylvania cohort study, 1972  114–​115, 119 urban ecology  141n9 utilitarianism  28, 29 Jeremy Bentham  19, 30–​33, 35, 38, 39, 40, 126 V Valverde, Mariana  9–​10, 19, 43, 48, 49, 57–​58 variability, of punishment  32 Verri, Pietro  25 victimology  5 Vienna Circle  46–​47 Villella, Giuseppe  57 Voltaire  25 W Walton, Paul  136 Washington, Booker T.  75 Weber, Max  11, 15, 45 Werlinder, Henry  48 Western criminology  2, 138n2 historical development of  4–​9 see also classical school of criminology; managerial (administrative of control-​ managerial) school of criminology; positivist (positivist-​etiological) school of criminology Wetzell, Richard F.  1, 5, 18 ‘What works?’ (Martinson)  111–​112 ‘White Man’s Burden’  74, 130 white men with property  34, 37–​38 white-​collar crime  101 Wilson, Darren  14–​15 Wilson, James Q.  105, 111, 112, 115, 121 Wolfgang, Marvin E.  114–​115, 119 women  38 see also feminist criminology; gender workhouses  39, 40 working class  culture  83, 88–​89, 92, 93 enfranchisement of men  61 white working class  17–​18 Y Yoemans, Henry  1–​2 Young, Jock  136 Z Zimmerman, Andrew  77 Znaniecki, Florian  72–​73, 75

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