The Safety Utopia: Contemporary Discontent and Desire as to Crime and Punishment

This book is about senseless violence and silent marches, about politics of decency and child pornography (and particularly about our abhorrence of it), about religion and living on the edge, about victims and offenders in that order, and especially about crime and punishment. The Safety Utopia is a diagnosis of modern culture. Fighting crime has become part of a general desire for safety resulting from a combination of real risks and a vital lifestyle. The Safety Utopia describes the implicit hope that vitality and safety can come together. This longing is an illusion and it is not without danger - a utopia is also a power fantasy in which control and punishment play a major role. A great deal is expected from criminal law, but that can hardly bring a safety utopia any closer. The utopian desire gives an impulse to moral renewal and community forming. Safety unites, but how? That is the crucial question of our time. This book will be of interest to those working in the areas of criminology, sociology, philosophy, criminal law and punishment, and cultural studies. It will also be of interest to policymakers working in Police and Justice Departments.

Comments in the Dutch press (translated): "an ongoing Aha-erlebnis, ...a brilliant diagnosis of today's society." "...The Safety Utopia belongs on the bookshelf alongside other social-scientific analyses of our times such as Anthony Giddens's The Consequences of Modernity (1990), Richard Ericson and Kevin Haggerty's Policing the Risk Society (1997) and David Garland's The Culture of Control (2001)." (Sir Anthony Bottoms)

Comments in the Dutch press (translated):

"an ongoing Aha-erlebnis, ...a brilliant diagnosis of today's society."

"...The Safety Utopia belongs on the bookshelf alongside other social-scientific analyses of our times such as Anthony Giddens's The Consequences of Modernity (1990), Richard Ericson and Kevin Haggerty's Policing the Risk Society (1997) and David Garland's The Culture of Control (2001)."

(Sir Anthony Bottoms)

My ?rst encounter with the world of crime and punishment was more than two decades ago, and it has since undergone vast changes. No one could have foreseen that crime-related problems would occupy such a prominent position in cultural awareness. Crime is on the rise, the public attention devoted to it has increased even more, and its political importance has mushroomed. The major change in the 1990s was perhaps the transformation of crime into a safety issue. Crime is no longer a matter involving offenders, victims, the police and the courts, it involves everyone and any number of agencies and institutions from security companies to the local authorities and from schools to pub and restaurant owners. Crime has become a much larger complex than the judicial system--a complex organized mentally and institutionally around this one concept of safety. In this book I make an effort to get to the bottom of this complex. It is the sequel to my dissertation Crime and Morality--The Moral Signi?cance of Criminal Justice in a Postmodern Culture (2000), where I hold that the victim became the essence of crime in Western culture, and that this in turn shaped public morality. In the second half of the twentieth century, a personal morality based on an awareness of our own and other people's vulnerability, i. e. potential victimhood, succeeded the ethics of duty.

From the contents:

Preface. Introduction. I Morality and Risks. Realistic Discontent and Utopian Desire. The Safety Utopia.- II Characters and Manifestations. The Pornographic Context of Sex Crimes. Senseless Violence and the Sound of Silent Marches. The Controversial Victim and the Offender.- III Punishment, Control and Democracy. The Changing Meaning of Criminal Justice. Criminal Proceedings as Tragedy. Democratic Safety Policy. Closing Comments.- References.