Sessar Porto Problems criminology has with criminal law

9
surveillance, in the sense that: the less we know about risks the more we have to supervise the
unknown. Should we, in addition to all this, follow Mary Douglas according to whom “risk is
not a thing but a way of thinking” (1992, 46), then we will inherit the ultimate problem both
in terms of epistemology and the justification of an overall risk prevention.
7. Prospects in lieu of a conclusion
René van Swaaningen once posed the question of whether with respect to sub-cultures, attachments,
control, exclusion, aggression, and the like we still need criminology as sociology,
psychology, political science, urban anthropology or neurology could do studies of this kind
as well (1999, 7). He thought that the only important surplus value lies in criminology’s
knowledge of the criminal justice system. In fact, we learned much about the complicated and
biased procedures within the police and the judiciary (the descriptive part of criminological
investigations by way of which the existence and functioning of widely independent codes of
practice were discovered); based on such rich material, labeling theory offered precious insights
into the definitional processes leading to crime (the analytical part of investigations).
The limitation of this approach was the emphasis on the political construction of crime while
neglecting the more general epistemological aspects.
The other limitation was the almost exclusive interest in the criminal justice system. The fact
that law makes crime is not but a point of reference for autonomous communication processes
in other functional systems affected by crime. As was already mentioned they take care to
harmonize crime with their own self-referential goals either by denying, integrating, redefining
or scandalizing it. Or they create it; should this provoke negative legal reactions they
might try to delegitimize law or claim that strict negative reactions would have affect the system’s
positive (functional) operations etc. This kind of communication turns crime into an
object of negotiation, very often with an open (contingent) output. Especially those systems
with strong function specifications have either much to win or much to lose through certain
forms of crime; they may therefore be called ‘partners of the law’.
Research in these areas is not unknown but is unstructured and lacks theoretical considerations.
A new critical criminology could take over this large field in order to observe and to
designate the functions of crime in the various social systems. When combined, the observations
may result in an unexpected picture of crime as having its own indispensable place in
society, despite its destructive qualities. Some of the subsequent questions will then be: Is this
still old-fashioned “crime”? Or do we have to change our old-fashioned perceptions of it?
References
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Bednarz J. Jr. (1989), Translator’s Introduction, in Luhmann N., Ecological Communication, vii-xvi.
Blumer H. (1969), Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method, Englewood Cliffs, N.J..
Boers K. (2003), Crime, fear of crime and the operation of crime control in the light of victim surveys and other
empirical studies, Council of Europe, European Committee on Crime Problems, 22 nd Criminological Research
Conference, Strasbourg, 24-26 November 2003.
Boers K., Sessar K. (1991), Do people really want punishment? On the relationship between acceptance of restitution,
needs for punishment, and fear of crime, in Sessar K., Kerner H.-J. (eds.), Developments in crime and
crime control research. German Studies on Victims, Offenders, and the Public, New York et al., Springer, 126-
149.
Bourdieu P. (1987), The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field, Hastings Law Journal 38,
814-853.