Thomas on Crime as an Assemblage @crowdedmouth

Phil Crockett Thomas, University of Glasgow, is publishing Crime as an Assemblage in the Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Criminology for 2020. Here is the abstract.

This article seeks to make an original contribution to criminology and the sociology of crime and punishment by elaborating the ‘assemblage’, a concept which originates in the collaborative poststructuralist philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and discussing its ontological implications for researching crime. I will first introduce the concept and its application. I then discuss the relationship between the assemblage and Michel Foucault’s concept of the dispositif. I demonstrate how the assemblage could be used to analyze crime events and discuss questions of change and scale within the assemblage. I conclude by outlining some implications for how adopting this concept would change the way we practice and research crime and punishment.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Criminology and Reform in the Early 20th Century

Michele Pifferi, University of Ferrara, Faculty of Law, has published Global Criminology and National Tradition. The Impact of Reform Movements on Criminal Systems at the Beginning of the 20th Century in Entanglements in Legal History: Conceptual Approaches (Thomas Duve, ed.; Max Planck INstitute for European Legal History Open Access Publications, 2013).

This article focuses on the international movement towards individualization of punishment between the 1870s and the 1930s as a model to study how legal theories developed in a global scientific dialogue have been differently shaped according to national traditions. Even if interpreted in different ways, the common idea shared by prison reformers, exponents of the new criminological science and a large part of public opinion in Europe, United States and Latin America necessitated a radical change from repression to prevention. The main focus shifted from crime as an abstract entity to criminals as natural, social human beings immersed in a complex network of environmental, social, economic conditions which affected their behavior. Nonetheless, the ‘criminological wave’ between the 1880s and the 1930s was not a uniform international parenthesis, but reflected in its variety the differences between American and European legal cultures and their notion of the principle of legality.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Law, Gender, and Crime

Malcolm M. Feeley, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and Hadar Aviram, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, have published Social Historical Studies of Women, Crime, and Courts at 6 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 151 (2010). Here is the abstract.

While traditional criminology has ignored the historical dimension of female crime, social historical literature has examined the interplay between gender and the criminal process in a variety of historical settings. This review examines studies focusing on changes in crime, prosecution, conviction, and punishment patterns over time, as well as studies in particular settings. From these studies we conclude that crime has not always been a predominantly male phenomenon and that female crime rates have changed over time. We also conclude that, within the different categories, women defendants in particular were perceived through a gendered perspective, and their criminalization and punishment, as well as its representation in popular culture, reflected this special perspective.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

The Killers Among Us

Theodore Dalrymple writes for City Journal about Stephen Griffiths, the self-described "Crossbow Cannibal," whose dissertation at the University of Bradford focused on homicide studies, and who apparently did empirical research for it by killing and eating women. Mr. Griffiths was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to three murders in 2010. More here from the Guardian.

Science and the Criminal Mind

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Evan R. Goldstein reviews Douglas Starr's new book exploring the origins of criminology, The Killer of Little Shepherds.