LAW40610 Crime and Society

Academic Year 2022/2023

A defining feature of modern societies is a heightened awareness of crime and its consequences. Individuals take account of victimisation risk when planning their routine activities; governments respond with repressive legislation and an increased use of imprisonment; confidence in rehabilitation wanes; expertise is side-lined; victims move centre stage; and there is an emphasis on performance measurement and efficiency. These arrangements have been described in terms of a ‘crime complex’, or a ‘new punitiveness’, or a technique of ‘governing through crime’ or a ‘search for order’. But such developments do not necessarily reflect rising levels of crime. Across Europe and the US the trend, in general terms, is downward. In Ireland, the level of serious crime has risen and fallen since the 1980s. The purpose of this module is to relate strategies of crime control to factors such as a country's political and welfare arrangements, its policy-making infrastructure, and any local peculiarities of context. The emphasis is comparative and the experience of other countries is used as a lens through which to view the situation in Ireland.