Running Head:CRIME, CRIMINOLOGY AND MODERNITY

Crime, Criminology and Modernity

Crime, Criminology and Modernity

Introduction

The prominent police scientists Bayley and Shearing have stated that, over the past ten to fifteen years, modern democratic countries like the United States, Britain, and Canada have experienced a fundamental break in the development of their systems of crime control, policing and law enforcement; 'Future generations will look back on our era as a time when one system of policing ended and another took its place' (Bayley and Shearing, 1996:585). This paper discusses the concept of crime, criminology and modernity.

Discussion

They maintain that a process of pluralizing of policing, coupled with a serious identity crisis, amount to a radical restructuring of policing in contemporary democratic societies.

Their analysis has been criticized by Jones and Newburn (2002) for overlooking the continuities that are equally important in understanding the current practices of policing in western countries. Moreover, they question the assumption made by Bayley and Shearing that the transformations in policing can be seen as global. Their thesis fails to take sufficient account of significant differences between the nature of policing in the United States and European countries.

The traditional liberal, permissive criminal justice climate in the countries were in many respects replaced by a harsher penal policy. At the same time, however, there were also other, almost contradictory developments.

Following Garland (2001), among others, we assume that the changes in policing over the last ten to fifteen years are closely related to a complex of social changes which may be described as the shift to a 'late modern' society. In most western countries this shift has been accompanied by a rise in the level of crime, a growing awareness and fear of insecurity and considerable impediments to citizens and governments seeking to find adequate (both formal and informal) ways of dealing with the problems of crime and disorder (Durkheim 1895:36-59). Moreover, these developments have contributed to a change in the position of the government, and of public institutions more generally. The influence of these general social changes on policing and security arrangements depends on the ways relevant actors and agencies deal with them.

These social, cultural and economic features of late modern society, sketched here only briefly, are an important context within which to understand the changes in policing and security arrangements for the last fifteen years in many western European countries. Many of these societies are faced with high levels of crime, widespread feelings of insecurity and complex, often contradictory expectations about the state (Graham 2001:78-95).

In this new constellation the position of the state itself is also changing. Several strategies are applied within this changing context to create an answer to the problems of crime and insecurity. This source of information tells us that, in the years between 1960 and 2003, the level of crime experienced a tenfold increase, the increase being almost continuous during the entire period, with the exception of the mid 1990's, when the level of crime recorded by the police seemed more or less to stabilize (Van der Heide and Eggen, ...