27th Baltic Criminological Conference

Vilnius, 26-27 June

Yakov Gilinskiy

Main Tendencies of Contemporary Crime and Criminology

There are many criminologies and many criminologists

R. Michalovsky

The main tendencies of crime and social control over crime define the main tendencies of criminology as science.

We live in the new world, the postmodern world.

I. Main characteristics of society of a postmodern

What is a main characteristics of a postmodern

society? 1. Globalization of economy, transport,

finances, technologies and - crime (especially organized crime – drug trafficking, human trafficking, arms trafficking, etc.).

2. Active migration of people and as a result of it is "the conflict of cultures".

3. Virtualization of life and activity, including cybercrime. We forking, we live in the real world and in the virtual world.

4. Consumerism. The slogan “all on sale" is realized in numerous crimes: street crimes (thefts, robberies, fraud) and white-collar crime, including corruption.

5. Relativism, relativity of realities and our knowledge of them. Crime is not objective reality, but social construct. The same (identical) actions recognize as criminal or not criminal in different societies and at different times.

It was clear in Roma: ex senatusconsultis et plebiscitis crimina exercentur (crimes arise from senatorial and national decisions)

6. Refusal of illusions of possibility of creation of "happy" society ("society of general prosperity"). The World wars, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Hitler’s concentration camps and Stalin’s GULAG destroyed residual illusions concerning mankind.

I wrote that "Slavery – it is bad, feudalism – it is bad, a socialism – it is bad, capitalism – it is bad …“. What is it good???...

7. Perception of the world as chaos — "post-modernist sensitivity" (W. Welsch, J.-F. Liotar).

"We fly in the plane without crew to the

airport which isn't designed yet" (S. Bauman).

II. Main Tendencies of Contemporary Crime

1. Globalization of crime, especially organized crime – drug trafficking,

human trafficking, arms trafficking, etc.

2. "Hate crimes" as result of mass migration, conflict of cultures and policy of the authorities “Divide et impera” (“Divide and dominate“).

3. Since the end of the 1990th – the beginning of the 2000th years observed the tendency of reduction of a crime rate and the majority of its types around the world.

For example, rate of homicide (per 100 000 population) decreased:

- Russia - from 23.1 in 2001 to 10.0 in 2013 - USA - from 6.2 in 1998 to 4.7 in 2011 - Germany - from 1.2 in 2002 to 0.8 in 2011 - Colombia - from 72.2 in 2002 to 33.2 in 2011 - Japan - from 0.6 in 2004 to 0.3 in 2011 - Lithuania - from 10.6 in 2000 to 6.4 in 2011 - Estonia - from 11.4 in 1999 to 4.8 in 2011 - Latvia - from 10.4 in 1999 to 3.1 in 2010

What is a matter? Why crime is drop? There are a few hypotheses.

• Most general hypothesis: the crime as a complicated social phenomenon develops under conformity to natural laws, irrespective of activity of police and criminal justice. The crime grew around the world from 1950th years until the end of the 1990th - the beginning of the 2000th years. Then the crime started decreasing around the world.

• More concrete hypothesis: the biggest contribution to statistics of crime is made by "street crimes". Her main subject (individuals) is teenagers and youth, and they lately went to the virtual world of the Internet. On the Internet the youth meets, loves, shoots, kills, creates, etc.

• There can be it is crime restructurization: highly latent cybercrimes force out habitual, usual “street crimes”.

• Also the hypothesis was offered of "securitization" of the modern world as the reasons of decrease in a crime rate on panel session "The Crime Drop" of 12th Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology (Bilbao, 2012) .

But it is everything only hypotheses. It is necessary to continue to analyze the world trends of crime and its types.

Can be new criminological discoveries expect us...

III. Main Tendencies of Contemporary Criminology

The main ideas of “critical (radical) criminology” and postmodern criminology are: 1. All positivistic theories and modern

criminology is erroneous. 2. All contemporary societies and powers are

bad, poor and give rise to crime and different negative deviance.

3. Crime is social construct. 4. The most factor (cause) of crime is social

and economic inequality. 5. Modern theories of chaos, catastrophe, the

concepts "strange attractor", bifurcation have to be methodological base of postmodern criminology.

The idea of "cultural criminology" is important that not only the crime is generated by culture, but also means, methods of social control over crime are culture generation.

Can be therefore in Europe the death penalty is cancelled, it remains in the USA, and in China annually execute thousands people.

We know about “crisis of punishment”. And one of the main topics of postmodern

criminology is how to optimize means and methods of social control. How to make social control, including punishment, more effective?

The content-analysis more than 6500 reports on 11 European criminological conferences and 4 world congresses showed that over 35-45% of all reports were about problems of social control over crime.

Than to replace imprisonment? What is role

mediation («Mediation versus imprisonment»)? How to improve work of police and administration of prisons? It were the main issues of criminologists.

«Implementation of the criminal law can become absolutely intolerable for society, having blocked other social processes … Reasonable decrease in volume of lawful violence can provide more interests of the country … Punishment is an obvious expense and implicit benefit … It is necessary to consider well-known properties of the criminal law, consisting that it is extremely expensive and very dangerous lever on the social relations» (A. Zhalinsky)

The world of a postmodern is the deviance world. "Deviation phenomenon is the integrated future of society" (P. Higgins, R. Butler).

Moreover: "The postmodernism makes devastating action" (P. Bourdieu)

And there is a lot of work for criminologists…

Thank you for attention!