The forms of government and social relations that increasingly characterize
contemporary society are giving rise to new ways of thinking about crime a
nd crime control. In Particular it is argued that although the discipline o
f crimology is currently well established in institutional terms, the intel
lectual fools of the discipline are of diminishing relevance to the social
world that is now emerging.
The article describes the major developmental trends in government policy a
s involving a shift from a welfare state, governed by Keynesian techniques
of demand management to a new form of regulatory state, premised upon a neo
-liberal combination of market competition, privatized institutions, and de
centred, at-a-distance forms of state regulation. These new styles of gover
nance are premised upon a recognition of new social forces and mentalities,
particularly of the globalizing logic of risk management, and they will in
creasingly reconfigure the social and political fields in ways that have co
nsequences for the Policing and control of crime
Criminology's traditional focus upon street crimes and thp institutions of
police, courts and prisons may he decreasingly relevant to the new harms, r
isks and mechanisms of control that are emerging today. The innovative work
of 'regulatory state scholars' such as Clifford Shearing is identified as
Pushing criminology in new directions that confound the discipline's tradit
ional boundaries but which give it more leverage age in the attempt to unde
rstand and respond to the control Problems of the end of the century. The p
ossibilities for restorative justice in the new context are also discussed,
as are other methods for combating insecurity, and both are linked to the
importance of developing forms of local knowledge that am informed by a sen
se of the global development context.
It is argued that the Keynesian state has been replaced by a new regulatory
state that is a more Hayekian response to a risk society. Clifford Shearin
g is identified as a criminological theorist who has come to terms with the
se developments, especially in his collaborations with Phillip Stenning Dav
id Bayley Tony Doob and his colleagues at the Community Peace Foundation in
Cape Town. Shearing et al. are forging a new paradigm (that incorporates t
he restorative justice paradigm) which might just transcend criminology and
become something of general import to the social sciences.