Review: Dangerous Offenders — Punishment & Social Order
| Published date | 01 April 2001 |
| Date | 01 April 2001 |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486580103400108 |
| Author | Ian Sue |
| Subject Matter | Reviews |
108
REVIEWS
tive
and
efficient simply because
the
new public management demands it;
and
the
new public management, let us
not
forget, offers more power to political leaders.
Indeed, intelligence
...
led policing is emerging very quickly as
the
next
great
movement,
perhaps
already
eclipsing
community
policing.
Its
borrowing
of
efficiency (and prevention) rhetoric is, again arguably, more persuasive to political
leaders who, after all
and
in
the
main, find
their
political longevity tied more
usefully to information
than
to democracy. Here again,
the
term globalisation is
important:
how
is democratic citizenry accountability rescued
in
a
context
in
which
the
rights of financial investors are to be secured by trans
...
national regula
...
tory/policing agreements? If, as Martha Huggins has convincingly claimed
(Political
Policing:
The
United
States
and
Latin
America)
aversion of export democratisation
has successfully used police
and
intelligence agencies to perpetuate fascism, we
have even more need to worry about thinking up
the
police
when
we
think
up
democracy. How localism meets globalism, it would appear, is
the
next
challenge of
democratic policing
and
accountability.
Willem de Lint
Victoria
University
of
Wellington
Dangerous Offenders -Punishment &Social
Order
Ed.
by MarkBrown&John Pratt.
(2000)
Published
by
Routledge,
London
&New
York,
197
pages.
This series of articles begin with acommentary
on
current criminological discourse
about
the
concept of dangerousness. Brown
and
Pratt
introduce three criticisms
that
they perceive as central to criminology's knowledge base. Firstly, it is overtly
insular
and
lacks a sociological dimension to risk and danger analysis. Secondly,
contemporary criminology is too reliant
on
positivistic methodologies especially in
the
areas of identifying
and
incarcerating dangerous offenders. Thirdly, criminology
has failed to develop a broader understanding
and
connection to
the
cultural signif
...
icance
that
aconstant and prolific discourse about risk and dangerousness, has
had
on
contemporary values, behaviour, institutional structures
and
the
social world.
This compilation is devised as a brief respite to
the
"closeted" orthodoxy of crimi
...
nological theory.
The
book comprises
ten
chapters by
ten
specialist authors. Each writer adopts a
differing perspective or lens
through
which
they
examine
the
issue of societal
danger. These include history, law, penology and governance
and
these equate with
the
four sections or areas of
the
book.
No
chapter is written as a definitive state
...
ment
on
the
current state of play in any area of expertise. Rather every author, as a
specialist criminologist is striving to develop a sample of what they consider to be
the
more salient and progressive points within their area of expertise.
This
series
of
articles sets
out
to shake
the
complacency
of
the
orthodox
paradigms by directing
the
reader's attention to a central thread
that
draws all
the
chapters together. Collectively,
the
authors want to convey a logic
that
not
only
THE AUSTRALIAN
AND
NEW
ZEALAND
JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY
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