(1) All quotes are from Stephen Wolfram.
36 research
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eu No. 63 | APRIL 2010
H
ow can the vicious circle of delin-
quency-punishment be broken?
A European Union–funded project
entitled Welfare State or Penal
State?, which ended in 2001, had already iden-
tified an upsurge in prison sentences in Europe.
With the end of the welfare state in the 1990s,
the researchers pinpointed a rapid decline in
social measures.
Many criminologists believe that the link
between economics and prisons has been
demonstrated by successive studies. Charlotte
Vanneste of Belgium’s National Institute of
Criminalistics and Criminology (Institut
National de Criminalistique et de Criminologie)
studied the correlation between Belgian
prison population statistics and the country’s
socio-economic situation over a period of
170 years (
1
). She identifies 20- to 30-year cycles
of growth and recession in which the troughs
of each recession correspond to peaks in the
prison population and vice versa. Between
the two wars there was a decline in the prison
population coinciding with a general boom in
the economy (favourable economic situation,
social regulation, wage indexing). However, in
the second half of the 20
th
century the figures
show a marked rise in both the prison popu-
lation and unemployment.
Zero tolerance or prevention?
Researchers in the CRCC (Crime Repression
Costs in Context) project have studied the
responses of European countries – and their
citizens – to rising crime in order to assess the
direct and indirect costs of crime under dif-
ferent domestic policies. The partners are
divided into two major ‘cultures’. The first,
typical of neo-conservative regimes, focuses
on conventional legal/police approaches, with
an increasing tendency towards zero tolerance
and summary justice, paying no attention to the
underlying socio-economic causes of deviancy.
The second approach (advanced liberalism) is
based on crime risk management and the
application of the precautionary principle. This
strategy aims to contain potential delinquency
(by acting on the economic causes of criminal
behaviour, modifying the urban environment,
developing social control strategies and other
means), as well as to prevent crime by encour-
aging the general public to take protective
measures (such as installing security doors and
alarms). Use of these self-protection techniques
is spreading rapidly. According to a European
crime and safety survey (
2
), the United Kingdom
holds the world record for video surveillance sys-
tems and the Netherlands the record for special
doors, whilst some form of security system was
installed in more than one tenth of new-build
properties in Budapest between 2002 and 2007.
Sense of insecurity
Researchers in the Crimprev project (
3
) have
made an in-depth study of the feeling of inse-
curity – quite different from real insecurity –
and its impact on social relations, especially
cultural rejection. The feeling varies depending
on the country, region and district. Are we
afraid to walk the streets after dark? The citi-
zens of northern Europe are a lot less nervous
than those of southern and eastern Europe.
Public nuisances – especially drugs – and visible
deviant acts (such as rubbish, graffiti and
gangs of youths) do much to fuel such fears.
“As governments are aware of the importance
of these social (and electoral) issues, they
are not short of proposals for combating the
feeling of insecurity, which some see as just as
important as real insecurity, albeit much harder
to measure”, explain the Crimprev researchers.
“Technology surveillance networks, data-
bases and private security services constantly
mention fear and anxiety”, says Joe Sim,
a professor at the Liverpool John Moores
University (
4
). “They have played up the sense
of imminent disaster, legitimising the authorities’
Although most Western
democracies are facing
problems of rising crime,
prison overcrowding, new
forms of delinquency and
failed prevention policies
amid a deteriorating socio-
economic climate, few
convincing solutions are
being advanced.
The cancer
of prisons
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