Crime Control and Punishment since Foucault
Synoptic Surveillance
Mathiesen- argues that Foucault’s account of surveillance only tells half the story when applied to today’s society.
He argues with the use of the media in late-modernity, there is the surveillance of below- the synopticon- where everybody watches everybody, as well as the top-down surveillance of the panopticon that Foucault theorises.
Thompson argues that powerful groups such as politicians fear the media’s surveillance of them may uncover damaging information about them, and this acts as a form of social control over their activities.
Another example of synoptic surveillance is where the public monitor each other through video cameras on dashboards or helmets, warning other road users that their behaviour is being monitored and result in them exercising self- discipline.
Similarly, wide spread mobile phone ownership means that ordinary citizens may now be able to “control the controllers", for example by filming police wrongdoing.
Mann et al calls this “sousveillance”- French word meaning under or below.
Surveillant assemblages
Haggerty and Ericson- surveillance technologies now involve manipulation of virtual objects (digital data) in cyberspace rather than physical bodies in physical space, as Foucault argues.
Until recently, surveillance technologies tended to be stand-alone and unable to “talk” to one another.
However, there is now an important trend towards combining different technologies- for example, CCTV footage can be analysed using facial recognition software.
Haggerty and Ericson call these combination “surveillant assemblages” and suggest we are moving towards a world in which data from different technologies can be combined to create a sort of “data double” of the individual.
Actuarial justice and risk management
Feeley and Simon- a new “technology of power” is emerging throughout the justice system.
Differs from Foucault’s disciplinary power in 3 main ways:
It focuses on groups rather than individuals.
It is not interested in rehabilitating offenders, but simply in preventing them from offending.
It uses calculations of risk, or “actuarial analysis”- this concept derives form the insurance industry, which calculates that statistical risk of particular events happening to particular groups.
Feeley and Simon apply this idea to surveillance and crime control.
For example, airport security screening checks are based on known offender “risk factors”.
Using information gathered about passengers, they can be profiled and given a risk score, with anyone scoring above a given level being stopped, questioned and searched.
This surveillance seeks to predict and prevent future offending rather than correct and rehabilitate.
According to Feeley and Simon, it does so by applying surveillance techniques “to identify, classify and manage groups sorted by levels of dangerousness”.
Young- actuarial justice is basically a damage limitation strategy to reduce crime by using statistical information to pick out likely offenders.
Evaluation
Actuarial justice tends to be in danger out a self- fulfilling prophecy.
Profiles of offenders are often complied using official crime statistics and if these appear to show, for example, that young Black inner-city males are the group most likely to carry a weapon, then police using this data will be more likely to stop them than members of other groups.