Crime, Criminology and Policing in Modern Europe since 1750

Description

Crime and criminality in the early modern period were often equated with sin and temptation and the punishment of “the criminal as sinner”, which frequently took physical form, was both public and brutal. In contrast, during the Enlightenment criminals were increasingly seen as rational individuals capable of self-interested calculation and penal policy was reformed to reflect this belief. The public and violent retribution that society had exacted upon the criminal’s body in the early modern period was thus slowly replaced by incarceration in purpose-built prisons where punishment was increasingly accompanied by attempts at reform and rehabilitation. While many historians, therefore, have understood the history of crime, criminology and policing in the modern era as a story of progress, rationality and humanitarianism, the theories of the French philosopher and cultural historian Michel Foucault have tended to problematise this grand narrative. Foucault has described modern approaches to crime and punishment as examples of disciplinary modes of power, which regulate behaviour, movement and thought by working on the mind rather than the body. These modes of power, which according to Foucault were introduced for a range of pragmatic rather than humanitarian reasons, operated during the 19th century in modern institutions such as prisons, where they were sustained by the scientific discourse of criminologists, doctors and psychiatrists. The insights offered by Foucault, whether embraced or rejected by individual historians, have helped shape historiographical debate about crime, criminology and policing for the last thirty five years.
Foregrounding these historiographical arguments, this course begins in the mid 18th century by considering Enlightenment approaches to crime, punishment and policing before examining early attempts to put understandings of criminality and penal policy on a scientific footing. The course then focuses on the emergence of both biological and sociological models of criminality during the 19th and early 20th centuries, noting their implications for crime prevention and penal policy in a wide-range of European contexts. In order to complement and contextualise this examination of the history of criminology, the course also traces the development of the forensic sciences and the professionalization of policing in modern Europe. Using the tool of historical analogy, the course concludes by asking students to consider the implications of the contemporary over-estimation of the forensic sciences (the so-called CSI-effect) and recent efforts to find criminality or violence in both brain chemistry and the genes.