Are you neoconservative on crime?

[madmusic]

“What” Garland asks “is the new problem of crime and social order to which the new
system of crime control is a response?” The first and most obvious part of his answer
is the large increase in crime and fear of crime, and the perception, especially amongst
the better-off, that existing policies and programmes no longer provided them with
effective security. The second, and more interesting part of his answer consists of an
account of the way in which the definition of “the problem” has been fought over. The
move away from penal welfarism was led paradoxically by liberal academics who
were critical of a “correctional” system that sought to impose a white middle-class
view of what was “correct” on criminal “deviants”. The correctionalist regime
involving psychiatric reports and indeterminate sentencing (time off for “good”
behaviour), they complained, was used to repress all those who did not conform to the
welfare regime’s mould of normality: blacks, the poor, the young and various cultural
minorities. This progressive critique, Garland demonstrates, was hijacked by
retributive conservatives. If the individualised programmes of the correctionalists
were failing to curb the growth of crime and discriminated unfairly, the right-wing
answer was more and longer fixed-sentences: “they argued that in the modern state,
individualistic values were better protected by retributive punishment than by an
invasive correctionalism that pressed everyone into conformity.”

This is a depressing book. It is eloquent, impressive in its range, penetrating in its
insights, and convincing in its analysis, but it offers little hope. The contemporary
scene that Garland describes is grim: “The hardening of social and racial divisions,
the reinforcement of criminogenic processes; the alienation of large social groups; the
discrediting of legal authority; a reduction of civic tolerance; a tendency towards
authoritarianism – these are the kinds of outcomes that are liable to flow from a
reliance upon penal mechanisms to maintain social order. Mass imprisonment and
private fortification may be feasible solutions, but they are deeply unattractive ones.
… A government that routinely sustains social order by means of mass exclusion
begins to look like an apartheid state.”

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:MVQFeOF7opQJ:www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/~jadams/PDFs/Reviews/garland%2520for%2520thes.pdf+%22The+Culture+of+Control:+Crime+and+Social+Order+in+Contemporary%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=10

[porphyrian]

1. Just wait until they figure out a way to jail the old and the poor...

...er, perhaps they already have. It is no longer ridiculous to claim that we may soon have more people in prison than out. The prison industrial complex, especially now that correctional institutions are being privatized, is a powerful lobby, and it's most powerful weapon - fear - is already being employed by the governments of the most powerful nations on earth.

[madmusic]

3. How true.

Here is another book review:

Thus we see how the interplay of structural economic transformation, social upheaval, technological change, institutional adaptation and political choice play into the making of a new paradigm for the crime control world. However, there is another fascinating dimension to Garland's explanation for our approaches to crime (and, he notes, welfare policy). A triumphant ethic of market individualism insists that we are all free, rational beings making choices about an array of options. For the middle classes and above, this leaves us free to work, play, purchase and prosper, liberated by the knowledge that we are free, self-made, and not responsible for the fates of others. For the working class and below, people are free to work, scrape, and go without, "liberated" by a culture that sees poverty as yet another choice made by a rational consumer. Within this framework, crime is also positioned as the rational choice of a free, self-made person and, therefore, the neo-conservative strategy of increasing the likelihood of apprehension and the severity of punishment is a sensible adjustment in the market economy of crime. The ethos that "crime is a decision, not a disease" parallels and supports the market economy's necessary fictions that prosperity and poverty are the accomplishments of individuals, not races, classes, or genders and that none of us is responsible for the plight of others or obliged to confront structural deficiencies in the system.

This is a vast and complex work that has the potential to recast our thinking about culture, crime, and social causation. Although some readers may occasionally resist the "How everything happened and why " narrative style of the book, THE CULTURE OF CONTROL is really compelled to produce such a narrative because of the scale of Garland's mission. And one has to judge the mission a success. His "loose structuralist" account of how economic, cultural, social, and political transformations create clusterings of pressures, necessities, and opportunities goes far toward debunking more simplistic accounts for the rise of the sometimes bizarre new world of crime control that marks our time.

Tragically, the most telling epilogue for this powerful book has been written by the episodes of terror and state reaction that marked the last months of 2001. When each day sees new and more radical measures of control as a desperate state swings blindly at its challenges, it is hard to imagine a more disturbing affirmation of the interconnectedness of crime policy, economics, politics, insecurity, and the seemingly intractable conflicts of our divided global culture. Also, it is also hard to question the prognosis that the "iron cage" built by our new culture of control will expand, fortify, and entrench in the years ahead.

http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/garland.htm

I haven't ordered yet, but will. It is really frustrating that the Left let the Right hijack victim's rights.

[porphyrian]

5. Well, we're working on it.

We've got too many career politicians who've stopped representing the people in favor of corporate and special interest money, and we're going to have to replace them before we can make anything stick. Of course, that requires that our votes are there, and that they're actually counted, and that the numbers aren't altered by electronic voting machines or other election thievery. This year is very important in deciding our future.

[madmusic]

7. That's a lot of hurdles.

Good point. Until we make some of those jumps, we can't really accomplish much else.

[Bucky]

2. I see anectdotal evidence of this. But are there hard number measures?

The problem in part stems from the tendency of people in our communities to attack anyone who they can't see right in their face. Impersonalized life makes public scorn easy. People who attack liberals as the root of all evil probably don't have to face liberals in their personal life. If you live only around a subgroup only, then expressing the most extreme views of that subgroup will give you status. This is how mob mentalities are shaped.

Don't get too smug. People on this board who regularly live in scorn of all conservatives, or glibly call Republicans "fascists" and Bush "*" are doing the same dehumanizing thing. In its own way, it's equally a cause for how the country is tearing itself into subgroups, and contributing to that disheartening menu:
* hardening of social and racial divisions
* alienation of large social groups
* discrediting of legal authority, and
* reduction of civic tolerance

That's the reality we live in. A president acting like he's got a mandate because he won 51% of the vote is a big, even a leading, cause of this disconnect between subgroups in this country and the sense of belonging to the whole. There are other factors and each of us at DU can contribute to a reversal of this trend by consciously making an effort to humanize our viewpoints by talking face to face with people we disagree with. Getting most of your info at DU or from liberal blogs is nearly as bad as getting it only from Fox News.

Anyway, it'd be interesting to see if this data posted here has been quantified in any way.

[madmusic]

4. What are you talking about?

Don't get smug? Who's attacking "liberals." Many democrats have differing views, some conservative, some liberal, some neoconservative. Asking someone to express their view is not attacking them. Don't get defensive.

As to the data, you can probably find data for and against the thesis, which has come to make sociology rather baseless. There are lies, damned lies, and statistics, and the data has become so twisted with political rhetoric and we, or at least I, quit listening to it at all for a while.

As to the data, here is one conclusion I found:

This article began by posing the complex question of why the crime problem has come to
occupy a more conspicuous position in the context of the general political debate. It has been
pointed out that actual crime trends constitute a misleading, or at least an insufficient,
explanation. In conclusion, therefore, an explanatory model is proposed which proceeds from
the dynamics of the politics involved, via the connection between policy and the societal
transformation witnessed over recent decades. In highly simplified terms, following the
Second World War, politicians were given a clear mandate to distribute the wealth created by
the market economy in a reasonably equitable fashion. As the development of the global
economy made the formulation of national economic policy more difficult, a divide opened
up between the policy expected by the electorate and that which it was possible to implement
(Habermas 1984; Bauman 1998; Young 1999). In this context, crime came to fill an important
function in the neo-liberal critique of the welfare state (Hall et al. 1978; Tham 1995; Beckett
1997). The view that it is the individual who determines whether he will succeed or fail is
important here. One of the cornerstones of the neo-liberal argument against the welfare state
is that one should not be able to blame society for one’s own shortcomings (Boréus 1997).
The critique argues that the welfare society produces individuals with no incentive to raise
themselves up out of poverty. The social conditions which constitute the breeding ground for
criminality have thus increasingly come to be regarded as excuses and evasions. Instead of
understanding crime as a social problem requiring reforms which improve the living
conditions of the most disadvantaged groups in society, the blame is placed firmly at the door
of the individual. The state should therefore focus on law and order rather than “wasting
money on expensive welfare programmes.” The former president of the USA, Ronald Reagan,
expressed this in the following terms in a 1983 speech: "Here in the richest nation in the
world, where more crime is committed than in any other nation, we are told that the answer
to this problem is to reduce our poverty. This isn’t the answer/ …/ Government’s function is
to protect society from the criminal, not the other way around" (cited in Beckett 1997:48). In
Sweden, conservatives were the first to exploit the problem of “rising crime” in this way.
Thereafter, first liberals and then social democrats have adapted or modified their position in
this same direction.

http://www.crim.su.se/pdf/Artiklar/2004a_EstradaF_a.pdf (pdf)

And there is plenty of data indicating fear of crimes is not based on a rise in crime. Do I think the swing to the right is partly this? Sure, along with the swing to the right on "medical police" etc., but maybe a swing to the right is a good thing. I'm not convinced, so if you or anyone else wants to convince me, give it your best shot. It will, however, be very difficult to convince me all this hasn't led up to BushCo's near flushing of the Constitution. I think BushCo misunderstood the people and thought he could get away with a lot more than he could. In short, the country isn't THAT far to the right. The recent survey on crime and prisons supports that.

[madmusic]

6. Here is an interesting paper, Bucky.

It doesn't exactly support the above, but it goes deeper into why people might be more afraid of crime even when crime rates plunge:

Introducing Fear of Crime to Risk Research

This article introduces the fear of crime to risk research, noting a number of areas for future
interdisciplinary study. First, the article analyzes both the career of the concept of fear of
crime and the politics of fear. Second, it considers research and theory on the psychology
of risk, particularly the interplay between emotion and cognition, and what might be called
the risk as image perspective. Third, the article speculates how people learn about risk and
suggests how to customize a social amplification of risk framework to fear of crime. Finally, the
article advances the argument that fear of crime may be an individual response to community
social order and a generalized attitude toward the moral trajectory of society. Each of these
areas of discussion has implications for future theoretical developments within risk research;
each highlights how risk research can contribute to the social scientific understanding of an
important issue of the day.

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2006.00715.x (choice of text or pdf)