27th Baltic Criminological Conference
Vilnius, 26-27 June
Yakov Gilinskiy
Main Tendencies of Contemporary
Crime and Criminology
There are many criminologies
and many criminologists
R. Michalovsky
The main tendencies of crime and social
control over crime define the main
tendencies of criminology as science.
We live in the new world, the postmodern
world.
I. Main characteristics of society of a
postmodern
What is a main characteristics of a postmodern
society?
1. Globalization of economy, transport,
finances, technologies and - crime (especially
organized crime – drug trafficking, human
trafficking, arms trafficking, etc.).
2. Active migration of people and as a result of
it is "the conflict of cultures".
3. Virtualization of life and activity, including
cybercrime. We forking, we live in the real
world and in the virtual world.
4. Consumerism. The slogan “all on sale" is
realized in numerous crimes: street crimes
(thefts, robberies, fraud) and white-collar
crime, including corruption.
5. Relativism, relativity of realities and our
knowledge of them. Crime is not objective
reality, but social construct. The same
(identical) actions recognize as criminal or
not criminal in different societies and at
different times.
It was clear in Roma: ex senatusconsultis et plebiscitis
crimina exercentur (crimes arise from
senatorial and national decisions)
6. Refusal of illusions of possibility of creation
of "happy" society ("society of general
prosperity"). The World wars, Auschwitz,
Holocaust, Hitler’s concentration camps and
Stalin’s GULAG destroyed residual illusions
concerning mankind.
I wrote that "Slavery – it is bad, feudalism –
it is bad, a socialism – it is bad, capitalism –
it is bad …“. What is it good???...
7. Perception of the world as chaos — "postmodernist sensitivity" (W. Welsch, J.-F. Liotar).
"We fly in the plane without crew to the
airport which isn't designed yet" (S. Bauman).
II. Main Tendencies of Contemporary
Crime
1. Globalization of crime,
especially organized crime – drug trafficking,
human trafficking, arms trafficking, etc.
2. "Hate crimes" as result of mass migration,
conflict of cultures and policy of the
authorities “Divide et impera” (“Divide and
dominate“).
3. Since the end of the 1990th – the
beginning of the 2000th years observed the
tendency of reduction of a crime rate and the
majority of its types around the world.
For example, rate of homicide (per 100 000
population) decreased:
- Russia - from 23.1 in 2001 to 10.0 in 2013
- USA from 6.2 in 1998 to 4.7 in 2011
- Germany - from 1.2 in 2002 to 0.8 in 2011
- Colombia - from 72.2 in 2002 to 33.2 in 2011
- Japan - from 0.6 in 2004 to 0.3 in 2011
- Lithuania - from 10.6 in 2000 to 6.4 in 2011
- Estonia - from 11.4 in 1999 to 4.8 in 2011
- Latvia - from 10.4 in 1999 to 3.1 in 2010
What is a matter? Why crime is drop? There are
a few hypotheses.
• Most general hypothesis: the crime as a
complicated social phenomenon develops under
conformity to natural laws, irrespective of
activity of police and criminal justice. The crime
grew around the world from 1950th years until
the end of the 1990th - the beginning of the
2000th years. Then the crime started decreasing
around the world.
• More concrete hypothesis: the biggest
contribution to statistics of crime is made
by "street crimes". Her main subject
(individuals) is teenagers and youth, and
they lately went to the virtual world of the
Internet. On the Internet the youth meets,
loves, shoots, kills, creates, etc.
• There can be it is crime restructurization:
highly latent cybercrimes force out habitual,
usual “street crimes”.
• Also the hypothesis was offered of
"securitization" of the modern world as the
reasons of decrease in a crime rate on
panel session "The Crime Drop" of 12th
Annual Conference of the European Society
of Criminology (Bilbao, 2012) .
But it is everything only hypotheses. It is
necessary to continue to analyze the world
trends of crime and its types.
Can be new criminological discoveries expect
us...
III. Main Tendencies of Contemporary
Criminology
The main ideas of “critical (radical)
criminology” and postmodern criminology
are:
1. All positivistic theories and modern
criminology is erroneous.
2. All contemporary societies and powers are
bad, poor and give rise to crime and different
negative deviance.
3. Crime is social construct.
4. The most factor (cause) of crime is social
and economic inequality.
5. Modern theories of chaos, catastrophe, the
concepts "strange attractor", bifurcation have
to be methodological base of postmodern
criminology.
The idea of "cultural criminology" is
important that not only the crime is
generated by culture, but also means,
methods of social control over crime are
culture generation.
Can be therefore in Europe the death penalty
is cancelled, it remains in the USA, and in
China annually execute thousands people.
We know about “crisis of punishment”.
And one of the main topics of postmodern
criminology is how to optimize means and
methods of social control. How to make
social control, including punishment, more
effective?
The content-analysis more than 6500 reports
on 11 European criminological conferences and
4 world congresses showed that over 35-45%
of all reports were about problems of social
control over crime.
Than to replace imprisonment? What is role
mediation («Mediation versus
imprisonment»)? How to improve work of
police and administration of prisons? It were
the main issues of criminologists.
«Implementation of the criminal law can
become absolutely intolerable for society,
having blocked other social processes …
Reasonable decrease in volume of lawful
violence can provide more interests of the
country … Punishment is an obvious
expense and implicit benefit … It is
necessary to consider well-known
properties of the criminal law, consisting
that it is extremely expensive and very
dangerous lever on the social relations» (A.
Zhalinsky)
The world of a postmodern is the deviance
world. "Deviation phenomenon is the
integrated future of society" (P. Higgins, R.
Butler).
Moreover: "The postmodernism makes
devastating action" (P. Bourdieu)
And there is a lot of work for criminologists…
Thank you for attention!