History, periodization and the character of contemporary crime control
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895818811905 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Author | David Churchill |
| Subject Matter | Thematic Section: The Uses of Historical Criminology: Explanation, Characterisation and ContextThematic Issue |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895818811905
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2019, Vol. 19(4) 475 –492
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895818811905
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History, periodization and
the character of
contemporary crime control
David Churchill
University of Leeds, UK
Abstract
In recent decades, several highly influential studies have sought to articulate the changed and
changing character of contemporary crime control in its historical context. While the substantive
claims of these studies have attracted close scrutiny, there has been remarkably little analysis
of the historiographical apparatus underpinning them. As a result, criminology has neglected
to develop a valuable, critical vantage point on how crime and justice in our own times are
understood. This article advances discussion of contemporary crime control by critically assessing
the historiographical foundations of existing studies. Furthermore, it outlines a new approach to
analysing the governance of crime through time, which might facilitate a more empirically robust
and satisfactory characterization of contemporary crime control. More broadly, the article signals
the significance of history and historiography for contemporary criminological scholarship, and
reflects upon the advantages of developing a more fully historical criminology.
Keywords
Epochalism, governance of crime, historical criminology, historical theory, historiography, late
modernity
The last three decades have seen an accelerating movement away from the assumptions that
shaped crime control and criminal justice for most of the twentieth century […] Today’s
practices of policing, prosecution, sentencing, and penal sanctioning pursue new objectives,
embody new social interests and draw upon new forms of knowledge, all of which seem quite
at odds with the orthodoxies that prevailed for most of the last century. (Garland, 2001: 3)
If, in one respect, the function of history expresses the position of one generation in relation to
preceding ones by stating, ‘I can’t be that,’ it always affects the statement of a no less dangerous
Corresponding author:
David Churchill, Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, School of Law, University of Leeds, Moorland Road,
Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK.
Email: d.churchill@leeds.ac.uk
811905CRJ0010.1177/1748895818811905Criminology & Criminal JusticeChurchill
research-article2018
Thematic Issue
476 Criminology & Criminal Justice 19(4)
complement, forcing a society to confess, ‘I am other than what I would wish to be, and I am
determined by what I deny.’ (de Certeau, 1988: 46)
Introduction
We are fast arriving at a new epoch in crime control: that, it seems, is the conclusion of
a series of impressive and eminent studies, appearing around the turn of the last century.
This ‘fin-de-siècle criminology’ (South, 1997) advanced what might be called the ‘dis-
continuity thesis’ – the idea that ‘modern’ criminal justice is gone (at least as we knew
it), and has been replaced by a new, ‘late-modern’ landscape of crime control, character-
ized by pluralized, preventative and punitive responses to crime. Surveys of macro-level
change in crime, control and social order (Ericson, 2007; Garland, 2001; Lea, 2002;
Reiner, 2007; Taylor, 1999; Young, 1999) were accompanied by more specific studies of
emergent developments in policing, security and punishment (see, among others, Bayley
and Shearing, 1996; Ericson and Haggerty, 1997; Feeley and Simon, 1992, 1994;
Hallsworth, 2002; O’Malley, 1992; Pratt, 2000; Reiner, 1992; Sheptycki, 1998). This
was a somewhat diffuse body of work – scholars disagreed on the precise nature of
change taking place, and still more on its causes. Uniting them, though, was a common
emphasis upon change of a fundamental, structural and historic kind. One leading scholar
discerned ‘the break-down of modernist conceptions of the state and the emergence of
new ways of organizing security’ (Garland, 2004: 163). His peers perceived a ‘paradigm
shift’ in penality (Feeley and Simon, 1994: 173), a new ‘paradigm’ in security (Johnston
and Shearing, 2003: 13–17), a ‘watershed’ moment in policing and crime control (Bayley
and Shearing, 1996: 585; Lea, 2002: 104), even ‘the end of criminal law’ (Ericson, 2007:
213). Each situated these developments within the broader social transformations charted
by leading contemporary sociologists, notably Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt
Bauman, Scott Lash and John Urry (see Savage, 2009). Hence, fin-de-siècle criminology
was shot through with novel characterizations of the contemporary social world – ‘post-
modernity’, ‘late modernity’, ‘liquid modernity’, ‘post-Fordism’, ‘risk society’, ‘market
society’, ‘neoliberalism’ and so forth. The notion of a new epoch in the governance of
crime led some to an equally significant claim – that the tools of modernist social science
would have to be adapted, reconfigured or reimagined as a result. New times necessitated
new theory (Garland and Sparks, 2000).
The success of the discontinuity thesis demonstrates the allure of grand claims of
structural transformation within criminology. Several scholars were drawn to make such
claims seemingly against their better judgement: some later curtailed the scope of their
argument (Simon and Feeley, 2003); others engaged in auto-critique (O’Malley, 1997,
2000); others still, though determined to refrain from making such sweeping claims,
were nevertheless criticized for doing so (Garland, 2001, 2003; cf. Loader and Sparks,
2004). Yet the basic argument – that some momentous change had taken place, funda-
mentally altering the character of crime control – took hold. It reappears in leading work
on the governance of crime (e.g. Schuilenburg, 2015), and still approaches the status of
common sense within the wider field. Fin-de-siècle criminology serves as a contempo-
rary cannon – a new set of ‘classical’ texts, offering a ‘big picture’ within which more
focused studies can locate themselves (see Davis, 1986). It both coalesced with and
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