Governmentality' and the Problem of Crime: Foucault, Criminology, Sociology
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Description
[. . . ] At a time when criminologists are trying to come to terms with a reconfigured criminological field, the governmentality literature offers a powerful framework for analysing how crime is problematized and controlled. It is focused upon the present, and particularly upon the shift from ‘welfarist’ to ‘neo-liberal’ politics. It avoids reductionist or totalizing analyses, encouraging instead an open-ended, positive account of practices of governance in specific fields. It aims to anatomize contemporary practices, revealing the ways in which their modes of exercising power depend upon specific ways of thinking (rationalities) and specific ways of acting (technologies) as well as upon specific ways of ‘subjectifying’ individuals and governing populations. It also problematizes these practices by subjecting them to a ‘genealogical’ analysis—a tracing of their historical lineages that aims to undermine their 'naturalness' and open up a space for alternative possibilities. [. . .] The governmentality literature does not offer a general thesis that can be ‘applied’ to the field of crime control. Nor does it provide a unified account of the present—such as ‘postmodernity’ or ‘risk society’—under which can be subsumed the facts of criminal policy or the developmental tendencies of the criminal justice system. It does, however, isolate a series of objects of analysis, and suggest certain lines of enquiry that strike me as having great potential for researching and interpreting current developments in this field. Pat O'Malley (1996) and Kevin Stenson (1993) have already suggested ways in which crime prevention and community policing can be illuminated by reference to this framework, and O'Malley's claim that neo-liberal social policy is increasingly promoting ‘prudentialism’ and ‘the responsible individual’ helps make sense of the expansion of the demand for private security, and the declining influence of ‘social criminologies’. Similarly, Feeley and Simon's account of ‘the new penology’ points to the increasing influence of ‘managerialism’, ‘risk-management’ and ‘actuarial justice’ in US criminal justice. In the following pages, I sketch some further ways in which an analytic of ‘governmentality’ might deepen our understanding of contemporary crime control and criminal justice.
Source Publication
Criminological Perspectives: Essential Readings
Source Editors/Authors
Eugene McLaughlin, John Muncie, Gordon Hughes
Publication Date
2003
Edition
2
Recommended Citation
Garland, David W., "Governmentality' and the Problem of Crime: Foucault, Criminology, Sociology" (2003). Faculty Chapters. 679.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/679
