New Times, New Crimes: Notes on the Depillarization of the Criminal Justice System
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New Times, New Crimes: Notes on the Depillarization of the Criminal Justice System Roger Matthews1
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract A great deal has been written about the changing nature and direction of criminology over the past two decades, including claims that we are moving into a “new penology.” Many of these claims are suggestive rather than authoritative. In contrast to most commentaries on the subject, this article provides longer historical overview and attempts to sketch out how the central structures or “pillars” of the criminal justice system have become weakened and eroded over the last 200 years and how the emergence of body of “new crimes” and their regulation is challenging what might be called the “old criminology.” The emergence of new relations between victims and offenders, criminal justice and social justice, as well as the development of innovative modes of regulation are, it is argued, changing the social and criminological landscape. This raises issues of theory and practice that challenge traditional conceptualisations of crime and punishment.
Introduction This article is divided into four parts. The first draws on the work of Foucault (1977) and his incisive depiction of the emergence of the modern criminal justice system, focusing in particular on the triangulated relationship between the prison, the police, and the construction of the criminal classes. The second part outlines what is referred to as the “depillarization” of the criminal justice system over the last 100 years or so involving the gradual weakening and erosion of these three “pillars.” The third part considers the development of a selected range of “new crimes”—cybercrime, environmental crime, and terrorism—and examines the ways in which the strategies that are being developed to respond to these issues involve a significantly different response than that which has traditionally been used to deal with “normal crime” and “street crime.” The final part involves a discussion of these developments and raises questions about their implications and significance for theory and for practice.
* Roger Matthews [email protected] 1
University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
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R. Matthews
The Social Construction of the Modern Criminal Justice System Anyone who has read Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977) will know that this book effectively transforms the way that we understand crime and punishment. Most commentators on this text, however, tend to be drawn in one of two main directions. Either they are attracted by his incisive analysis of discipline or they are fascinated by the powerful discussion of the panopticon and spatial regulation. Both these issues are, of course, important, but arguably the most significant section of the book is the chapter that deals with the formation of the modern criminal justice system at the end of the eighteenth century. In this chapter—the first chapter of Part II—Foucault outlines how a range of transgressions become redefined in that
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