Law and order from below or from above? The challenge for criminologists
| Author | Henrik Tham |
| Published date | 01 July 2013 |
| Date | 01 July 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1477370812474533 |
| Subject Matter | Presidential Address |
European Journal of Criminology
10(4) 387 –393
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370812474533
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Law and order from below or
from above? The challenge for
criminologists
Henrik Tham
Stockholm University, Sweden
Culture has been said to be that which keeps violence down (Adler-Karlsson, 1981: 18).
In this sense, criminology could be regarded as culture. From this starting-point I will
briefly consider the role of criminologists in today’s Europe.
Criminologists could be seen as engaging in culture by exposing violence and suffer-
ing in their different forms. Besides their overt manifestations, this includes exposure
both of the hidden encroachments they represent on people’s integrity and rights and of
the unequal distribution of the suffering caused by crime.
Criminologists could be seen as engaging in culture by analysing the causes of crimes.
Criminological research, from ethnographical accounts to analyses of time series, gives
a better understanding of the phenomena than popular and media explanations.
Criminologists thereby point towards possible remedies for aggression and infringe-
ments and a possible reduction of the harms suffered by victims of crime.
Criminologists could also be seen as engaging in culture when doing research to
expose the way the state employs violence in order to curb crime. Whether or not they
are effective, state actions against crime constitute violence that is exercised through the
police, prosecutions, the courts and the implementation of punishment, especially impris-
onment. This coercion exercised by the criminal justice system is sometimes quite neces-
sary. It does, however, constitute an exception to the basic rights of citizens as these are
formulated in the fundamental laws and constitutions of European states.
Criminologists then also illustrate the costs of criminal policy and criminal justice in
the broadest sense of these terms (Anttila and Törnudd, 1973: 191ff). These costs include
the suffering of those imprisoned and of those maltreated and discriminated against by
the system, infringements of the legal principles of the Rechtstaat, the fear of crime cre-
ated as a result of political alarmism, and suicides and health problems resulting from
incarceration and misdirected drug policies.
Corresponding author:
Henrik Tham, Department of Criminology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, SE-106 91, Sweden.
Email: Henrik.Tham@criminology.su.se
474533EUC10410.1177/1477370812474533European Journal of CriminologyTham
2013
Presidential Address
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