What is it about?
Several aspects of how crime is dealt with today appear new. This is based on a way of thinking about the present as a break from the past. This article asks whether this way of thinking is appropriate, and suggests an alternative.
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Why is it important?
An idea of our time as new, separated from the past, colours the way we think about how we deal with crime today. By undermining this idea, and connecting the past and present in a different way, this article might change common assumptions about how to respond to crime today and into the future.
Perspectives
This is my effort to get to grips with how history shapes our view of the present. The main idea was to stress that we often think of our time as having a certain character, and we tend to explain that by contrast with older times (which had different characters). This basic way of thinking has significant implications, though, as I hope to draw out here. I also try to sketch a way of thinking about the character of the present which I find better, and try to show how that would open up new ways of looking at how we deal with crime today.
David Churchill
University of Leeds
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: History, periodization and the character of contemporary crime control, Criminology & Criminal Justice, November 2018, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1748895818811905.
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