New Modernity in Reaction to
Positivist Criminology
Culture of Narcissism &
Ontological Insecurity
Positivist Criminology (Paradigm)
Orthodoxy (epistemology)
 Myth of Objectivity
 Lack of historical context
 Rise of the prison Industry &
austerity
Vapid Empiricism (ontology)
 Fetishization of Methods
 Statistical findings with little
meaning

E.g. Trees & Crime (Baltimore)
Late Modernity
Sidestepping “Post Modern” debates
Lasch, & Foucault (postructuralism)

Does the contemporary conditions of
the present represent a qualitative
break with, or merely a quantitative
intensification of what has gone on
before... (p.63)

Ontological (anomic) Insecurity (p.58)
 Durkheim (normlessness)
 Leisure: Kaleidoscope of choice
 Demand for self-identity in the face
of pervasive social disruption
Hyperpluralim



Clashing values &
ideologies
Spatial understandings
upset
The rise of the luck
industry

Recession of personal worth

Achievement & skill
Hyperpluralism
Responses to Hyperpluralism
 Change reinvent resist

Recede into essentialist
explanations of others..
Institutional violence against social
groups
(racist attacks, labour attacks)
Politics of social inclusion &
exclusion
Beyond binaries...
Social Exclusion

“The profoundly precarious
position of most of those
‘included’ in late modern society
in turn spawns anger,
vindictiveness, and a taste for
exclusion. From this precarious
social perch, it can all too easily
seem that the underclass unfairly
lone on OUR taxes and commit
predatory crimes against us...”
(p. 62)
Social Exclusion
“Reconnaissance
battles" fought out
in specific
territorial places ,
which are battles
to define and
redefine sociopolitical spaces.
(Bauman 2002, & quoted on p53
of your text)
Emotion, expression & experience...
“..even the dullest of habits
and routines are often
sites of great intensity,
scuttling escapes from
existential fears, places of
reassurance and solace...”
(p. 65)


Forgotten in Orthodox
Criminology
Dangerous Ahistoricism
Rational Choice Theory
Assumes “criminal motivation
is a given” (Hayward, 235)
Felson
 Low self control
 Opportunity
 Calculation*
 Targets
Classical Approach for the
1980s...
Neo-classist criminology
Multiple Registries
of Rationality
Consumption Culture
“Why do consumers act against
their better judgement and
engage in spending they later
regret?”



Vocabulary of Motives
Tandem relationship between
rationality & excitement
Identity & Insecurity
The goal of a mass simulation culture is
psychoanalysis in reverse - reverse enlightenment
(Frankfurt School).
Freud (the opposite of me is it or ego/id)

Despair as a structure



The parts that were just yours, are now general property
Confession culture?
Pleasure principal of mass media (spectacle)
Culture of Narcissism (Lasch)


Over-socialization
Alienation (tuning out)

‘Disnification’ of experience
Responses:
• Shopping for self
• Leisure activities (purged
from labour process of late
modernity – ahistoricism)
Cohen’s Punitive City
1970s Decarceration
Movement
 Halfway housing, etc
 Expanding the prison
 Into the community
 Blurring spatial boundaries
 Surveillance Society?
Cohen’s Punitive City


No evidence...
Prison explosion





Incapacitation/rehabilitation
Punishment creep
Punishers creep
Community corrections
Governing through crime...
Prisons as Populated Spaces
Orthodox definitions of rational
criminals
Segregation
Prison as but one kind...
Framing prisoners as
consumers of the prison
lifestyle...
Gated communities another...
Gated & Prison communities



Concrete barriers
Homogenous population
Regional


Gated Canadian Communities?
Regulation of Community &
Surveillance
Risk Management Lifestyles
Protection from “crime” is
now a lifestyle/commodity
No longer about civic
engagement
Celebrate!
Baudrillard:
Treating people like
products and
products like
people...
Liquid modernity
Cynicism...
Similar to the term
‘motive’, do not
misunderstand
Lasch’s
understanding of
Narcissism