Social defence and international reconstruction: Illustrating the governance of post-war criminological discourse

This article examines the technocratic priorities of criminological discour se following the Second World War. In doing so, it charts the role and infl uence of the United Nations and the doctrine of social defence, and traces those shifts and events that have forged a nexus between criminological end eavour and processes of governance. This article aims to illustrate that so cial defence and international reconstruction provide a useful framework fo r understanding the links between power/knowledge and the pragmatic orienta tions of criminological scholarship.