The Criminal and His Science
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Description
The last decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the formation of a new form of knowledge which has become familiar to us as the “science of criminology”. Within a remarkably brief period, perhaps no more than 20 years after the appearance of Lombroso's L'Uomo Delinquente in 1876, this knowledge developed from the idiosyncratic concerns of a few individuals into a programme of investigation and social action which attracted support throughout the whole of Europe and North America. This explosion of interest in the criminological enterprise led to the publication of hundreds of texts, the formation of dozens of national and international congresses, conferences and associations, and the assembly of an international social movement which pressed the claims of criminology upon the legislatures and penal institutions of virtually every western nation. The widespread success of that movement in establishing criminology as an accredited discipline in the institutions of government, penology and education means that a detailed description of that programme might today appear to be unnecessary. The character and concerns of this knowledge are well known. Its premises and implications have been frequently discussed, either with approval or, more recently, with some dismay. Its concepts and recommended practices, for better or for worse, underpin many of the penal sanctions and institutions of nations throughout the modern world. But for all that it is a familiar and established discipline in today's world, it would seem that its history and development have escaped the close and critical scrutiny usually afforded to powerful forms of social knowledge. There has yet to be produced an intensive history of the discipline, either in terms of its internal development or else its social effects, despite the beginnings made in this direction by Jeffrey (1960), Radzinowicz (1966), Cohen (1974) and Matza (1964). This failure of criminologists to reflect critically upon their own practice has meant that our knowledge of criminology's development is sparse and inadequate. We are left with, on the one hand, hagiographies of the “founding fathers” and their “scientific mission” and, on the other, wholesale dismissals of the “reactionary purpose” and legacy of “positivism” with all the simplifications and over statements which these entail. What is missing is any detailed account of the theoretical formation of the criminological programme, its internal characteristics and its relationship to its social conditions of emergence. The following account does not claim to make good this absence. But it does attempt to take these issues seriously and to deal with the evidence of concrete texts, statements and events. In particular, it examines the theoretical framework of criminology, asking how this structure of problems, propositions and concepts came to be assembled, and how it related to the events and institutions of the social world. It is hoped that such an account can begin to explain the peculiar lines of development subsequently taken by the discipline, as well as indicating the basis of its affinity to the institutions of power which were later to embrace it in their practices and ideologies. I have termed this a “critical” account—as opposed, perhaps, to an “impartial” one—and I should say at the outset what is meant by this and what its limitations are. In the pages that follow there is little space given to the progressive features of positivist criminology. These features are well enough known since they are inscribed in the prefaces and pages of virtually every positivist text, but, lest they be lost sight of, let me repeat them here. The new criminology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century promised an exact and scientific method for the study of crime, a technical means of resolving a serious social problem, and a genuinely humane hope of preventing the harm of crime and improving the character of offenders. The present paper does not seek to deny these progressive elements, nor to question the motivation of the individuals who took up criminology and promoted its demands. But it does seek to question the notions of science, of crime and of rehabilitation which underpinned this movement, and it suggests that in the detailed formulation of its arguments criminology colluded in a definite set of political assumptions and policies. The paper's critical stance derives from a recognition of the unstated and unjustified nature of this collusion and from the view of the author that its consequence was more often the continued repression of disadvantaged sectors of the population than the liberation of society from the problem of crime.
Source Publication
History of Criminology
Source Editors/Authors
Paul Rock
Publication Date
1994
Recommended Citation
Garland, David W., "The Criminal and His Science" (1994). Faculty Chapters. 704.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/704
