NCJ Number
204865
Date Published
2004
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This chapter examines the way in which American ideas of crime and punishment have worked to criminalize poverty and have helped shape current European policies toward crime and punishment.
Abstract
During the past several years, a moral panic regarding what has become known as “urban violence” and “youth delinquency” has been sweeping across Europe, promulgated by American criminal ideology that criminalizes poverty. These ideas have saturated modern societies, including European societies, to such an extent as to serve as a framework for policy. The author analyzes the ways in which Washington think tanks have engaged in the worldwide marketing of an ideology regarding what constitutes crime and what constitutes punishment; the author refers to this ideology as the new “penal common sense.” The new penal common sense originated in Washington, DC, and New York and has made its way to London, where it pervades the culture and criminal justice institutions. The author asserts that the American policies and approaches to crime and punishment that emerged in the United States showcase a penal rigor that can now be felt around the world. Public policies and opinions in England began changing as American criminological theories informed government and private agencies in England. Many of these American theories focused heavily on neighborhoods characterized by poverty as hotbeds of criminal activity. European penal management and social welfare have also been heavily influenced by American themes such as “zero tolerance” and “prisons work.” The author contends that further evidence of the cooptation of the European criminal justice system by the new penal common sense can be seen in the production of pseudo-scientific official reports, which can conveniently be waived as empirical proof of the effectiveness of their own processes. In closing the author notes that the hegemony of American policies and practices must now be extended to their punitive treatment of social insecurity and urban marginality, which were created by dominant American economic policies in the first place. Notes, references