NCJ Number
89037
Date Published
1981
Length
17 pages
Annotation
The futurist, Alvin Toffler, argues that the present law and order crisis has little to do with local, transitory, or political reasons. It exists because all industrial societies are going through a similar, technologically driven social transformation towards some sort of postindustrial ('The Third Wave') society.
Abstract
Society is now passing through the first stage of a vast transnational upheaval, a wave of revolutionary change from which a new society is already beginning to emerge. This new superindustrial order will have different technologies, values, family institutions, and different legal arrangements as well. These changes stem, in part, from both material and cultural fragmentation. That is, a new technology is multiplying choices available and thereby enhancing rather than suppressing differences in society. Rather than resisting the forces of change simply by blindly attempting to shore up traditional judicial structures, society might better proceed by determining the type of society it wants, the way future forces could be used to create a preferred future, the function of law and order in this preferred future, and the structuring of legal and judicial institutions in such a future. Three references are cited.