Towards a Utopian Criminology

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONThis chapter identifies the commitment to the development of practical projects concerned with improving or reforming society by eradicating (or at least reducing) crime as a key theme running throughout the history of criminology. This is despite the sometimes formal claims amongst criminologists to value-neutrality and the objective social 'scientific' nature of the discipline. At the heart of criminology, it is argued, lies an implicit vision of 'the good society'. However, within a contemporary climate at best discouraging radical reimaginings of the social order and, at worst, warning of their inherent dangerousness, such visions have typically been repressed. The result has been an emphasis on 'tinkering at the edges' or 'piecemeal reforms', which leave underlying broader structural inequalities in which issues of crime and justice are located, intact. Despite increasing calls (from both social scientists in general, and criminologists in particular) for the development of an 'emancipatory social science ' (Wright, 2007; and 'a better politics of crime and its control… under which a more hopeful and more richly democratic way of approaching questions of crime and justice might be developed ' (Loader and Sparks 2012, p. 14), there has, as yet, been little guidance as to how such improved social sciences are to be realised. It is in response to this absence that the development of a 'utopian method' as proposed by Ruth Levitas (2005;2007a; is advanced as a means of developing an explicitly normative and speculative form of criminology. It is argued that, via the three aspects to this method identified by Levitas (archaeology, architecture and ontology), the implicit visions of the good society inhering in different criminological theories can not only be rendered explicit, but, crucially, can be subjected to normative evaluation. Moreover, in so doing, it is anticipated, a genuinely 'utopian criminology' can be realised.

Beyond Criminology

“…Frustrated by the inequalities I saw within criminal justice processes and the apparent inescapabilty of these, despite the best efforts of critical scholars to challenge them, the social harm approach seemed to hold out the hope of the possibility of another world. In this respect, it coincided with another substantive area of interest I had and continue to have, specifically utopianism and the holistic reimagining of societies and the relationship of these to social theories (see Copson, 2013Copson, , 2016. In particular, I was, and remain, interested in the extent to which criminology, even in its most critical variants, reproduces the status quo, and the potential of zemiology to challenge this.…”

Beyond ‘Criminology vs. Zemiology’: Reconciling Crime with Social Harm

“…In conclusion, as this discussion has sought to highlight, the danger is that existing debates around the relationship between criminology and zemiology, tend to do so in the abstractmissing the extent to which such theoretical perspectives can and should be understood as normative projects. In this aspect, Zedner (2011) is right to highlight the suppression of normativity within criminology and the danger this poses for turning criminology into a technical discipline for administering criminal justice, but this is a threat that is facing contemporary social research more generally (see Copson, 2013). Whilst such issues may be of interest to the social theorist, their wider significance is less obvious.…”

“…This is not helped by the contemporary climate of knowledge production, of which the apparent ambiguity concerning the relationship between zemiology and crimnology and, particularly, the opposing tendencies towards, on the one hand, hostile polarization between these perspectives and, on the other hand, However, the resolution of this ambiguity between criminology and zemiology is important because, whilst cast as minor disputes about abstract issues, at its heart, it taps into normative questions about how critical scholars imagine their role vis-à-vis effecting meaningful social interventions that address social problems. The reduction of these tensions to seemingly abstract and often dry debates regarding terminology, reflects the increasing suppression of normative theorising within social research (see Copson, 2013;2016) and…”