To What Extent Administrative or Cultural Criminology Is Able to Speak Truth to Power - Research Paper Example

The aim of criminology is to speak truth to power. Debate the extent to which either administrative or cultural criminology is able to achieve this. Truth is referred to a kind of correspondence with the facts. However, advocates of truth have commonly believed that it remains little more than vague, guiding intuition. The traditional equations of truth with ‘membership in a coherent system of beliefs,’ or ‘what would be verified in ideal conditions,’ or ‘suitability as a basis for action’ are believed to be very unlikely of action as these do not accommodate the ‘correspondence’ intuition. Thus, the expression, ‘truth’ seems somewhat disguised by its superficial form that tends to result in incorrect correlation and comparisons, theoretical uncertainty and inexplicable pseudo-problems (Horwich, 2). With respect to crime and criminology, behaviour in violation of criminal law is construed as crime and the law Criminology, in general, encompasses fields of psychology, sociology, politics, science, law, history, geography and other areas with different disciplines being dominant in different points in history of criminology coupled with differing orientations found within criminology in different countries. This clearly indicates a number of different approaches being taken to the subject matter within criminology, with these approaches sometimes appearing at odds with each other. The administrative side of criminology forms the central part of criminological venture. As criminological research is broadly based on such theoretical suggestions, its various activities take over the metaphysical and epistemological postulations of those theories, including postulations and assumptions concerning the nature of truth and means to acquire it. Thence, a debate evolves as to what approach plays a better or more significant role in acquiring truth in criminal justice. From a criminology and criminal justice point of view, trying to know and understand the truth by those with the power over the situation requires speaking simple truth. The aim of criminology is to speak truth to power. This has certainly been debated by many criminologists and sociologists since a very long time in history. Criminology, from the administrative perspective, concentrates on the nature of the criminal event and the setting in which it occurs and assumes that offenders are rational actors who attempt to weigh up the potential costs and benefits of their actions (McLaughlin and Muncie 6). As suggested by Foucault (qtd. in Lee, 30), idyllic power can be exercised through a range of state and private apparatus and institutions such as the police, the health authorities, welfare societies, benefactors, philanthropists, the family, medicine, hospitals etc which is focused on the development of human being from a quantitative and qualitative perspectives. The quantitative aspect entails growth and wellbeing of the human, whereas the qualitative aspect includes the moral and emotional development of the individual. A debate on the viability of the path taken up by administrative and cultural aspects of criminology based on analytical or explanatory bifurcation is worth the effort. This emphasizes rational and emotional elements of human behaviour considered from a crime perspective. A variety of criminological theories offer competing perspectives on crime and have different implications if applied to the field of community and criminal justice practice. For instance, the positivist methodology and the utilization of the tools of natural sciences to identify the ‘criminal man,’ the self-report studies and victimization surveys, tracking criminal records, etc provide trend of criminal activities that would probably help criminology in framing criminal justice policies and practices to bring about justice and control over crime in society. This would also further provide an insight into the relationships between the offending and criminal justice system. Yet, evidences do not prove a satisfactory coverage of crime and criminal activities (Stout, Yates and Williams, 10). The criminal justice policies and practices so framed also have an educative influence, thereby establishing the values of nonviolence and peace in contrast to violence and crime. Rationality and routine activities based on theories still left the causes of offending largely unknown. As explained by Natanson, the epistemological foundation of criminology is based on the fact that ‘truth’ has to be the objective that should be accomplished with appropriate methods of inquiry thereby attaining accurate and more-or-less certain knowledge of that objective truth (qtd in Arrigo and Williams, 26). In this regard, he further emphasizes that truth emerges from existing facts, independent of human beliefs about how things are, and that this would require knowledge of things that can be obtained from rationalism and empirical enquiries (Lee, 133). Positivistic theorists of criminology strongly rely on this aspect, which they believe can derive truth through administrative and cultural methods of dealing with crime and criminal justice. De Haan and Loader (2002) have specially emphasized emotions in crime noting that, ‘many established and thriving models of criminological reflection and research continue to proceed in ways that ignore entirely, or at best gesture towards, the impact of human emotions on their subject matter.’ Quite evidently, criminology and the associated theories are required to operate with a broader notion of practical and subject-oriented realization and morality. In short, the theories should incorporate an element of feelings and emotions of the offender, normative meanings that the offenders attribute to their own behaviour that include the social and cultural contexts. The impact of incorporating or considering the role of emotions involved in crime, punishment and social control has evolved from the more recent humanities and social sciences, rather than as an element of criminology itself. Cultural criminology emphasizes the role of image, style, representation and meaning both within illicit subcultures, and in the mediated construction of crime and crime control. It seeks to import the insights of cultural studies into criminology. Crime, as a social construct, forms a product of culturally-bound social interaction. Appreciative understanding of the meanings and emotions associated with crime and crime control form the base of cultural criminology (McLaughlin and Muncie, 75). In this regard, from an appreciative criminology perspective, understanding and appreciating the social world of the individual with reference to crime and deviance stands strong in the categories of certain subcultures such as the hobo, the drug takers, the juvenile criminals, etc. Understanding the deviant’s standpoint through a participative approach can provide an insight into the social psychology and sociology. The perspective of interactionism is believed to offer alternative positive ways of thinking and understanding crime and criminality. This makes one understand the characteristics of criminals from individual pathology point of view, further enhancing understanding on the causes and determinants of criminality. Further, this tradition truth to be relative, meaning some things are true for someone or some group without meeting the standards required for something to simply be true (Arrigo and Williams, 25). Overall, an understanding of reasons and trends of criminalities becomes extremely important in both, administrative and cultural, criminologies for truth to be surfaced in the right manner. According to Gottfredson, theories in criminology tend to be unclear and lacking in justifiable generality. This lack of clarity results in apparent inconsistencies, although more attention to the structure of a scientific theory and its requirements might reveal more agreement among theorists than currently present. It might even reveal sharp disagreements, helping to identify conflicts among theories in such a way that they could be decided by critical tests. The available theories very minimally provide practical guidance that does not require strong base or practicality. This will make truth to again be disguised, in which case, it will not remain ‘truth.’ In this context, criminologists require strong base to theory building that would require certain critical choices to be made explicitly. Gottfredson (qtd. by Adler. 4) clearly pointed that presumptions may be mistaken for facts by both scientists and policymakers when central theoretical concepts either are not recognized as assumed or are not defined in a scientifically acceptable manner. Examples of theoretical assumptions taken as facts abound in criminology are the ‘social nature of man,’ the ‘class-crime relations,’ the ‘futility of rehabilitation.’ In the wake of criminological theories, they should consists of postulates, theoretical constructs, logically derived hypotheses, and definitions that can be improved constantly through hypothesis testing, examination of evidence from observations, revisions of the theory, and repetitions of the cycle, repeatedly modifying the theory in light of the evidence, thus enabling truth to be spoken loud and clear. Gottfredson strongly urges that no specific human characteristic can be used to define or label a criminal. Labeling a human as criminal does not describe any state of a person in the way that any reliable diagnostic procedure would. In general, it does not provide validity or reliability to demonstrate crime or any such act. This can only refer to a combination of personal behaviour and events as defined by the criminal law and by various actors in the criminal justice system, that is, behaviour of others. Ignoring this view had been one of the major loop holes in the criminological tradition because of its negligence towards the emotional element of antisocial acts. It always focused on converting the lived truth of crime into the predictable plainness of speech based on reason. However, with strong standpoint of people like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre and Bataille, a focus on the background emotions and feelings associated with crime and violence emerged (Hayward, 148) Cultural criminology broadly focuses on conceptualization of crime as culture and reconstruction of culture as crime (Ferrell 404). This has been explained through the convergence of cultural and criminal processes in contemporary social life, with specific reference to mass media constructions of crime and crime control. From a constructionist point, cultural criminology points to the sensitivity of intervening courses of meaning other than those of the mass media. It further presents an increasing postmodern receptivity and responsiveness further than dualisms of criminal activity and media coverage, facts and truth, and distortion of truth. Cultural criminology further evolves beyond the conventional sociology, criminology, and cultural studies, fitting in a myriad of significant standpoints on crime and crime control. With the help of these standpoints, cultural criminologists release the intricate politics of crime as engaged through intervened anti-crime operations. This is accomplished through induced cultural constructions of deviance, crime and nonconformity, and also through criminalized subcultures and their resistance to legal control. As Ferrell explains (398), cultural criminology works through undertaking development of a structurally and politically informed version of labeling theory depicting an analysis that accounts for complex and intervened interaction through which the meaning of crime and deviance is constructed and made obligatory. Ferrell further supports this point by Becker’s classic injunction that considers all the people involved in an episode of alleged deviance or crime, all the parties to a situation, and their relationships. This also includes a collective examination of the cultural relationships and the webs of meaning and perception in which all parties are entangled. Applied criminology, seen as a critical intervention has significant implications that direct the contemporary youth justice policy and practice towards more irrational ways (Stout, Yates and Williams, 115). The authors urge that these policies and practices have, to a very minimal extent, a valid effect on criminological legitimacy and play least role in speaking truth to power. This is attributed to the factness and expediency of facts involved in criminal justice based on the scientific and administrative criminological approaches. These approaches provided nothing more than knowledge based insights on how to manage and regulate the challenging individuals and groups in the sphere of crime. Focusing on what Bottoms pointed in this regard, an evidence-based criminological approach will have to contravene the crude politicization and the perpetuation of popular punitiveness (qtd in Stout, Yates and Williams, 116), and focus on more sophisticated, measured and dignified approaches to bring out the actual truth. To achieve this, depoliticization of youth crime and justice, and development of more progressively tolerant human rights complain, non-criminalizing, inclusionary and participative strategies would be required. As an addendum to this, sociological perspective can help to a great extent in achieving the appropriate criminal justice. Thus, from a sociology point of view, considering the statement by Hudson (qtd. in Stout, Yates and Williams, 115), criminology is itself a part of the apparatus of social control,’ sociological criminology tends to deviate from the approaches of applied criminology in the sense that it disregards questioning oppositions in the social order or exploring the overlapping nature of social injustice and criminal injustice, or analyzing the complex relations between individual agency and socioeconomic and political structures. Sociological perspective of dealing with crime and justice in turn points towards continuous generation of meaning around interaction, rules created, rules broken, morality, political intervention and contravening impact, all of which take the helm of cultural criminology. Another perspective of crime control is the element of ‘fear.’ The Home Office (qtd in Lee, 133) clearly states ‘an element of fear can be considered in persuading people to guard against victimization’ indicating a significant impact of induction of fear of crime among people introduced in order to prevent crime. As an object of governance, this was brought about and nourished by contingency, has certainly become a self-fulfilling concept in criminal justice in controlling crime. This is more an administrative project as the task of governance by fear of crime involves creating fearing subjects through a set of rationalities of crime prevention, empirical enquiries, and particular forms of governable subjectivity or personage (Lee, 134). However, fear of crime requires an alternative framework with a more concrete conceptualization of the concept as a relic of disciplinary and governmental knowledge. Governance of fear of crime from a distance is aimed at achieving the ‘common good,’ as explained by Foucault (qtd. in Lee 137). This, he attributes to the failure of governing crime in the modern times due to the commonality established in everyday life in contemporary world. Expressing ambiguity on the modern theories of criminology, he points to the skepticism involved in abilities of the government to bring out truth, and that is unlikely to be believed because of the emerging competing regimes of truth that undermine the single expert opinions. Governing fear of crime requires strategies that can prevent crime, planning policies that can play an active role in delegating appropriate responsibilities to local councils in matters of crime prevention through various programmes, etc. Other strategies that can be considered in this category are the ‘zero tolerance,’ ‘tough on crime,’ and ‘no more excuses’ as can have significant impact on policy formation, system expansion, and practical intervention (Stout, Yates and Williams, 116). Thus, this administrative criminology when conceptualized as a shifting set of practices aimed at normative administration of criminal justice, based on technologies and techniques, can help to a significant extent in crime prevention. Looking at this aspect of crime from a cultural criminological perspective, the criminological behaviour would be required to be reinterpreted as a practice for sorting out certain psychological and emotional conflicts that are in turn viewed as being lastingly linked to various features of contemporary life (Hayward, 17). In the sense, this would involve sociological analysis that can be extremely useful in understanding various forms of criminal activities including sabotage, theft, destruction, fire, any form of assault, peer group violence, and other forms of street delinquencies that are closely linked to self expression and exertion of control. Such complex forms of crime require use of sophisticated, measured and dignified approaches to bring out the actual truth. This would be possible through cultural criminology, sociology, and criminal youth justice studies, in combination with methodologies drawn from administrative criminology, philosophy, postmodern critical theory, cultural geography, anthropology, research approaches and pragmatic observations (Hayward, 141). In conclusion, with the backing of Walklate’s statement (11), criminology as a discipline has been characterized historically by the desire to search for a universal explanation of crime. This search has led to various methodologies, techniques and approaches to bring the truth hidden behind the criminal activities. Exercising its power, the criminal justice system, through policies and practices, aims to facilitate disclosure of truth. Thus, in turn by speaking truth to power, it is possible to challenge power, to analyze its sources and question its conclusions. This, in fact, has led criminologists and sociologists to relook at the methodologies and approaches designed, which resulted in emerging of different knowledge gathering and construction process in criminal justice disciplines. In the conventional and contemporary criminological approaches, no single approach, in isolation, has been completely successful in attaining criminal justice. As criminologists carry on further research based on robust studies, it may be inferred that application of various permutations and combinations of criminological approaches and theories may be required to speak truth to power. Thus, this promises to endow a theoretical structure for analyzing criminal aetiology and social action in a more complex and integrated way. Works cited Arrigo, Bruce A. and Christopher. R Williams. Philosophy, Crime, and Criminology: critical perspectives in criminology. University of Illinois Press, 2006. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=ywUeAWo_TgAC&dq=truth+and+criminology&source=gbs_navlinks_s De Haan, Willem and Ian Loader. On the Emotions of Crime, Punishment, and Social Control. Theoretical Criminology. Sage Publications, London. Vol. 6(3): 243-253. http://www.rug.nl/rechten/faculteit/vakgroepen/stcr/cri/onderzoek/publicaties/intro.pdf Ferrell, Jeff. Cultural Criminology. Annu. Rev. Social. 1999, Vol. 25. pp. 395-418 http://ponce.inter.edu/acad/facultad/jvillasr/LECTURAS/CULTURAL%20CRIMINOLOGY.pdf Hayward, Keith. J. City Limits: crime, consumer culture and the urban experience. Routledge Cavendish, 2004. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=z6dsFVAH_KQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Hayward,+City+Limits:+crime+consumer+culture+urban+experience#v=onepage&q=&f=false Horwich, Paul. Truth. Edition 2. Oxford University Press, 1998. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=kdEaoYOCv3wC&dq=truth&source=gbs_navlinks_s Lee, Murray. Inventing Fear of Crime: criminology and the politics of anxiety. Willan Publishing, 2007. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=7UQEHhZOPp0C&pg=PA85&dq=administrative+criminology#v=onepage&q=speak&f=false McLaughlin, Eugene and John Muncie. The Sage dictionary of criminology. Edition 2. Published by SAGE, 2005. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=4hOgdU9GsdQC&pg=PP1&dq=McLaughlin+and+Muncie+criminology#v=onepage&q=&f=false Stout, Brian, Joe Yates and Brian Williams. Applied Criminology. SAGE Publications Ltd, 2008. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=aELvdUlKSIwC&pg=PA115&lpg=PA115&dq=truth+and+applied+criminology&source=bl&ots=KrA8oP_06p&sig=Zm85H828bB4ercgg8rfXVJDNi4Y&hl=en&ei=_K-PSqb6Mo7c7AP_kajSCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false Walklate, Sandra. Understanding Criminology: current theoretical debates Crime and justice (Buckingham, England). Edition 3. McGraw-Hill International, 2007. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=r9gacIu-Z_YC&pg=PA4&dq=competing+perspectives+on+crime+criminology#v=onepage&q=truth&f=false Read More