Foucault on “Avowal”: Theatres of Truth from Homer to Modern Psychology

FOUCAULT, MICHEL. 2014 . Wrong‐Doing, Truth‐Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice . Ed. Fabienne Brion and Bernard Harcourt, trans. Stephen Sawyer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Cloth $35.00, E‐book $7.00 to $30.00. The publication of a previously unknown set of lectures delivered by Foucault in 1981 at Louvain's criminology institute constitutes a major revelation for legal and criminological scholars (Wrong‐Doing, Truth‐Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice, 2014). The lecture material includes an extended discussion of the techniques used by Oedipus to establish the truth of his familial crime, a reflection on the beginnings of the inquisitorial justice system (which Foucault here argues paved the way for the scientific revolution), and analyses of contemporary forensic confessions. Throughout these meticulously edited lectures, the scientific and philosophical “inquiries” that revolutionized modern European knowledges are shown to be rooted in embodied practices of confession and avowal that go back to ancient Greece.     

Rethinking the war against hate crimes: A New York city perspective

Francis Allen, The Borderland of Criminal Justice: Essays in Law and Criminology Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964

Francis Allen, The Crimes of Politics: Political Dimensions of Criminal Justice Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974

Francis Allen, Law, Intellect, and Education Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1979

Francis Allen, The Decline of the Rehabilitative Ideal: Penal Policy and Social Purpose New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981     

“Sealfie”, “Phoque you” and “Animism”: The Canadian Inuit Answer to the United-States Anti-sealing Activism

A corpus made by online Canadian newspaper articles, coming from the archives of CBC News, Vice Canada and Huffington Post Canada, and related multimedia contents such us audio interviews, videos and especially links to images and comments shared on Twitter, allows us to reconstruct the debate on the seal hunt that involved Canadian media in 2014. In specific, we propose an interpretation of the pro-sealing discourse by Canadian Inuit and Newfoundlanders as an ironic and incisive answer to the serious United States animal rights activists discourse, explaining how these two different points of view on animals come from a different experience of the environment and a different conception of nature. The image of the seal became the friction point between Western naturalism against Inuit animism: a multinaturalist (Descola in Beyond nature and culture, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2013) clash in the North America post-colonial situation. A clash solved by people as Tanya Tagaq and other Inuit artists that belong to these two different semiospheres (Lotman in Universe of the mind. A semiotic theory of culture. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1990) and thanks to their border placement can allow a dialog between Inuit and North American cultures traducing aesthetic forms, values and meanings. To study the structures of meaning at the base of this clash and iconoclash (Latour, in Weibel, Latour (eds) Iconoclash. Beyond the image-wars in science, religion and art, pp 14–37, ZKM and MIT Press, Boston, 2002) on the artic seal between opposite cultures, it has been necessary to use the socio-semiotic approach (Greimas and Courtés in Semiotics and language: an analytical dictionary, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1982, Marrone in Corpi sociali. Processi comunicativi e semiotica del testo, Einaudi, Torino, 2001) with the help of semiotics of culture tools (Lotman in Universe of the mind. A semiotic theory of culture. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1990, Culture and explosion. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 2009].     

Translating CPTED into Crime Preventive Action: A Critical Examination of CPTED as a Tool for Active Guardianship

This paper will argue that the effectiveness of CPTED ought to be judged in terms of the extent to which it is successful in facilitating opportunities for active guardianship of places. With this premise in mind, the CPTED component of surveillance will provide the focal point of investigation. Reynald (Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal, 11(1):1-20, 2009, Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency, 2010b) demonstrated that supervision or natural surveillance is one of the core dimensions of active guardianship in residential areas. This paper will begin with an illustration of how the CPTED principles are translated into crime preventive action in residential environments by using observational data to get a first-hand look at how CPTED functions in practice. The paper will then go on to combine these field observations with interview data from residents themselves to show the ways in which opportunities for the CPTED component of surveillance are affected, not simply by the design of the physical environment, but also by the context in which the opportunities exist. These results will be used to critically reflect on some inherent conflicts and points of neglect in the relationship between the components of surveillance, territoriality and image/maintenance, as a means of airing some of the conceptual and practical weaknesses that may serve to limit the existing CPTED model.     

Review essay / The precinct confessional

Peter Brooks, Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000, x + 207 pp.     

Policing built environment crime risks: the role of police in CPTED in New South Wales,Australia*

Crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) is now routinely adopted in many parts of the world. The role assumed by police in CPTED practices has however received limited academic attention. Through an analysis of available documentation and interviews with local government planners from 10 Sydney councils, this article provides a (partial) understanding of the historical and contemporary roles police have played in the development and implementation of CPTED guidelines in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. It is argued that the NSW Police Force was a pivotal driver of the introduction of planning guidelines to ensure crime risks are considered when new developments are being planned. However, the ongoing contribution of police appears to have waned, largely due to administrative, practical and operational realities. These findings have relevance for ongoing CPTED practice and the work of specialist policing roles more generally.     

Review essay / mental illness and criminal justice

Norval Morris, Madness and the Criminal Law Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982, 235 pp.     

Pursuing justice in a free society: Part one—power vs. liberty

John Kaplan, The Hardest Drug: Heroin and Public Policy Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983, xi + 247 pp.     

Overstepping police authority

Bernard Harcourt, Language of the Gun: Youth, Crime, and Public Policy Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006, xiii + 278 pp.     

>The role of subjectivity in criminal justice classification and prediction methods

Leo Katz, Bad Acts and Guilty Minds: Conundrums of the Criminal Law Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987, vii + 343 pp.     

Reframing Political Freedom In The Analytics Of Governmentality

What distinguishes studies of government (gouvernamentalité) from histories of administration, historical sociologies of state formation and sociologies of governance is their power to open space for critical thought. According to Michel Foucault, studies on government are studies of a particular stratum of knowing and acting, of the emergence of particular ‘regimes of truth’ concerning the conduct of conduct, ways of speaking truths and the costs of so doing, and of the inventing and assemblage of particular apparatuses and devices for exercising power and intervening in particular problems. The key point of this paper is that in the analytics of governmentality political freedom no longer depends on the systemic logic of the balance between government and governed, but on subjects’ obstinate and wild desire to live freely and on the ethos of those who intend to govern themselves and their like autonomously, which obstructs that logic even with extreme consequences. This capacity of resistance comes from life, from the sum of its functions that are useful in resisting death and no longer from a core of subjective rights, or from the will of individuals who oppose the state or the market.

BOOK REVIEW

Abstract

MY BLOODY LIFE: THE MAKING OF A LATIN KING. Sanchez, Reymundo. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2000. Reviewed by Zelma Henriques     

BOOK REVIEW ESSAY

Abstract

MATERNAL JUSTICE: MIRIAM VAN WATERS AND THE FEMALE REFORM TRADITION, by Estelle B. Freedman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Reviewed by Dorothy Moses Schulz.

TORONTO'S GIRL PROBLEM: THE PERILS AND PLEASURES OF THE CITY, 1880-1930, by Carolyn Strange. Toronto, Can.: University of Toronto Press, 1995. Reviewed by Dorothy Moses Schulz.

THE “GIRL PROBLEM”: FEMALE SEXUAL DELINQUENCY IN NEW YORK, 1900-1930, by Ruth M. Alexander. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. Reviewed by Dorothy Moses Schulz.     

The relationship between socio-economic characteristics, victimization and CPTED principles: evidence from the MIMIC model

This study seeks to explore how different house type, socio-economic variables in the neighborhood (length of residence and household income) and residents’ victimization experience influence Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) and its respective principles: natural surveillance, access control, territoriality and maintenance. The study focuses on a sample of 164 inhabitants from a typical neighborhood in the city of Penang, Malaysia. An observation checklist was used to measure all the four principles of CPTED. A Multiple Indicator-Multiple Cause (MIMIC) analysis using AMOS 16.0 was employed to analyze the data at the level of individual property. Each latent factor and the relationships among them were modeled in a priori MIMIC hypothesized model. Prior to the MIMIC analysis, the study employed first and second-order confirmatory factor analysis on CPTED to determine the best indicators for the CPTED construct. The findings confirmed that CPTED is best measured by four principles. The results further indicate that CPTED is associated with a reduced risk of burglary victimization, while household income is positively associated with CPTED. The model shows that territoriality has a negative direct relationship with victimization. There are direct and positive influences of house type on natural surveillance and territoriality, while the length of residence only affects access control.     

Mental Disorder, Work Disability and the Law

R.J. Bonnie and J. Monahan, eds., Mental Disorder, Work Disability, and the Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997): 321 pp.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Abstract

A Handbook for Cultural Trustees: A Guide to the Role, Responsibilities and Functions of Boards of Trustees of Cultural Organizations in Canada , Marion Paquet, with Rory Ralston and Donna Cardinal. Waterloo, Ont.: University of Waterloo Press, 1987. 75 pages, $22.95. Reviewed by Brann J. Wry.

Bureaucratizing the Muse: Public Funds and the Culture Worker , Steven C. Dubin. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987. 226 pages, index. Reviewed by George C. Koch and Joan Jeffri.     

Reentry Within the Carceral: Foucault, Race and Prisoner Reentry

Early research on prisoner reentry was largely practical and applied, oriented to policymakers responding to the myriad challenges presented by having millions of people leaving prisons and jails each year. More recently, scholars have drawn on critical theoretical frameworks to reformulate the problem as bound up with large-scale shifts in the nature of social control (Wacquant in Dialect Anthropol 34(4):605–620, 2010a), deep racial divisions (Nixon et al. in Race/Ethnicity: Multidiscip Glob Contexts 2(1):21–43, 2008), and transformations of the United States political economy (Hallett in Crit Criminol. doi:10.1007/s10612-011-9138-8, 2011). This paper continues the work of theoretical elaboration through two avenues: (1) examining the contribution that Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish can make to the conceptual development of reentry scholarship, and (2) reworking Foucauldian concepts and themes important to the study of reentry to account for their racialized characteristics.     

The hidden origins of enorm lesion

Plato's Penal Code: Tradition, Controversy and Reform in Greek Penology. Trevor J. Saunders. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1991. xvii + 414pp. (incl. Indexes). £50 hb. ISBN 0 19 814893 3.

Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the time of Cicero to the time of Ulpian. Susan Treggiari. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1991. xv + 578pp. (incl. Indexes). £65 hb. ISBN 0 19 814890 9.

Marriage, Divorce and Children in Ancient Rome. Edited by Beryl Rawson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. xiv + 252pp. (incl. Index). £35 hb. ISBN 0 19 814918 2.

Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. J.A. Brundage. University of Chicago Press, 1987. xxiv + 674pp. (incl. Index). £21.50 pb. ISBN 0 226 07784 5.

Church Courts, Sex and Marriage, in England, 1570–1640. M. Ingram. Past and Present Publications, Cambridge University Press, 1987. xiii + 412pp. (incl. Index). £45 hb. ISBN 0 521 386551.

The Medieval Canon Law. Teaching, Literature and Transmission. (The Sandars Lectures in Bibliography: 1987–1988). Dorothy M. Owen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. xii + 82pp. £25 hb. ISBN 0 521 39313 9.

Notaries Public in England since the Reformation. C.W. Brooks, R.H. Helmholz and P.G. Stein. Norwich: The Erskine Press for the Society of Public Notaries of London, 1991. ix + 148pp. (incl. Index). £60.00 hb. £29.95 pb. ISBN 1 85297 0340.

The Common Law and English Jurisprudence 1760–1850. Michael Lobban. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. xvi + 315pp. (incl. Index). £35.00 hb. ISBN 019 825293 5.

Prosecution and Punishment: Petty Crime and the Law in London and Rural Middlesex, c. 1660–1725. Robert B. Shoemaker. Cambridge: The University Press, 1991. xxviii + 352pp. (incl. Index). £40/$64.50 hb. ISBN 0 521 40082 1.

The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century, Peter Linebaugh. London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1991. xxvii + 484pp. (incl. Index). £25 hb. ISBN 0 713 99045 7.

American Jurisprudence 1870–1970: A History. James Herget. Houston, Texas: Rice University Press, 1990. x + 367pp. (incl. Index.) $35.00hb. ISBN 0 89256 305 0.

Deutsche Juristen aus fünf Jarhunderten. G. Kleinheyer and J. Schröder. Heidelberg: C.F. Muller, 1989. 415pp. (incl. Index.) DM 34.80 pb.

Quellen zur Reform des Straf‐ und Strafprozessrechts, III Abteilung, NS‐Zeit (1933–1939), Band 1. Edited by J. Regge and W. Schubert et al. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991. xxi + 648 pp. (incl. Index.) DM 498.

Quellen zur Reform des Straf‐ und Strafprozessrechts, III Abteilung, NS‐Zeit (1933–1939), Band 2, 1 Teil. Edited by J. Regge and W. Schubert et al. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991. xxxi + 772 pp. (incl. Index.) DM 598.     

Book reviews

Elites, Parties and Democracy: Festschrift for Professor Mogens N. Pedersen edited by Erik Beukel, Kurt Klaudi Klausen and Poul Erik Mouritzen. Odense: Odense University Press, 1999. Pp.xii + 341. DKK 350 hb ISBN 87 7838 506 7.

Horses in Midstream: U.S. Midterm Elections and their Consequences 1894–1998 by Andrew E. Busch. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburg Press, 1999. Pp.ix + 254. $45 hb ISBN 0 8229 4105 8; $19.95 pb ISBN 0 8229 5705 1.

Race, Redistricting, and Representation: The Unintended Consequences of Black Majority Districts by David T. Canon. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Pp.xiv + 324. £35 hb ISBN 0 226 09270 4, £13 pb ISBN 0 226 09271 2.

Rulemaking: How Government Agencies Write Law and Make Policy by Cornelius M. Kerwin. Washington DC: CQ Press, 1998 Second Edition. Pp.x + 294. $28.95 pb. ISBN 156802 418 5.

The Republican Takeover of Congress edited by Dean McSweeney and John E. Owens. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1998. Pp.xii + 202. £42.50 hb ISBN 0 333 66965 7.

When Women Lead: Integrative Leadership in State Legislatures by Cindy Simon Rosenthal. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp.xiv + 240. £35 hb ISBN 0 19 511540 6.

Reforming the House of Lords: Lessons from Overseas by Meg Russell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp.xi + 368. £18.99 hb ISBN 0 19 829831 5.

EU Committees as Influential Policymakers edited by M.P.C.M. Van Schendelen. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998. Pp.xiv + 294 £42.50 hb ISBN 1 84014 724 5.

The Dignity of Legislation by Jeremy Waldron. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp.xiii + 206. £35 hb ISBN 0 521 65092 5, £12.95 pb ISBN 0 521 65883 7.     

Government(ality) by Experts: Human Rights as Governance

The suggestion that the general economy of power in our societies is becoming a domain of security was made by Michel Foucault in the late 1970s. This paper takes inspiration from Foucault’s work to interpret human rights as technologies of governmentality, which make possible the safe and secure society. I examine, by way of illustration, the site of the European Union and its use of new modes of governance to regulate rights discourse—in particular via the emergence of a new Fundamental Rights Agency. ‘Governance’ in the EU is constructed in an apolitical way, as a departure from traditional legal and juridical methods of governing. I argue, however, that the features of governance represent technologies of government(ality), a new form of both being governed through rights and of governing rights. The governance feature that this article is most interested in is experts. The article aims to show, first and foremost, how rights operate as technologies of governmentality via a new relation to expertise. Second, it considers the significant implications that this reading of rights has for rights as a regulatory and normalising discourse. Finally, it highlights how the overlap between rights and governance discourses can be problematic because (as the EU model illustrates) governance conceals the power relations of governmentality, allowing, for instance, the unproblematic representation of the EU as an international human rights actor.