Book Review: Law and Order: Arguments for Socialism
| Author | Andrew Goldsmith |
| Published date | 01 December 1983 |
| Date | 01 December 1983 |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486908301600416 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
282
BOOK
REVIEWS
(1983) 16
ANZJ
CRIM
Law
and
Order:
Arguments for Socialism. Ian Taylor, Macmillan, London (1981)
234 pp.
For
those students of criminology during the 1970s, like the reviewer, who
discovered The New Criminology by Taylor, Walton and Young, and have awaited
the development of the ideas contained in that book with some degree of interest,
many are likely to be surprised by the tone and content of Professor Taylor's book.
The
book
title's resemblance to Tony Benn's recent Arguments for Socialism is no
confidence, giving a clue to the book's thesis. For Taylor's treatment of the
development of social policy in the post-World War II British welfare state, and the
emergence of radical critiques of the prison system, the police, the legal system and
the
position of women under the law, does not take the form of a criminological
treatise. Instead it is a political document, intended to fill the need (identified by
Taylor) in the Labour Party for a more theoretically coherent policy on law
and
order
issues, and to provide ablueprint for a transition from the existing state of
affairs to a socialist democracy. Appearing at a moment when factionalism in the
Labour Party is most evident, and at a time when Harold Wilson has described
Labour's policies as "prehistoric", the author's timing is not inappropriate.
However, being a political document, Taylor appears more concerned with
the
broad
strokes, and on occasion therefore may be criticized for a lack of scholarly
detail.
In a chapter entitled "The Reality of Ring-Wing Criminology", Taylor makes the
case, also made by others, of a correspondence between the return to political
power by the Right and the return to individualistic, retributive law and
order
policies. This is unobjectionable. I do, however, remain sceptical as to the extent
to which, as suggested by Taylor, the writings of James QWilson and Patricia
Morgan constitute a widely read and influential theoretical exposition of current
social problems in Britain, or constitute in any sense (except the weakest) a right
wing "criminology". The influence of the largely anonymous tabloid press here is
much more striking, yet it receives little attention. It is also in this chapter that
Taylor clearly establishes apolemical tone for the book, resorting on occasions,
somewhat disconcertingly at first, to statements made in the first person.
In Chapters 2 and 3 the book charts the demise of the 1945 social democratic
vision of the British welfare state until the present, and then identifies some general
changes needed in order to redirect socialist social policy in the 1980s. Criticism is
made of the excessive reliance in the past upon both private and state-employed
professionals, and the subsequent disillusionment with the therapeutic model,
whether in the context of children, adolescents or whole families. While conceding
that
aneed for professional assistance, policing and the containment of some
offenders will remain, Taylor argues for the avoidance ofthe "authoritarian statism"
of the post-World War II welfare state and for greater recognition by the institutions
comprising the state of "popular needs and popular political rights". In the final and
most substantial chapter, five areas for practical involvement in order to create a
socialist criminology are identified: the prisons, police accountability, law and civil
liberties, and the womens movement. It is here that the author's objective is
considerable
but
that there is also a tendency to gloss over and reduce to a
questionable level some complex issues. Police accountability is one example.
While undoubtedly the role of police committees has tended to become trivialized
(if, in fact, it was ever anything else), their lack of involvement in policy matters is
not
simply (or clearly) the result of unfavourable legislation,
but
has also involved
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