Ideology and relative autonomy in anglo-canadian criminology

This paper examines the concepts of ideology and relative autonomy as they have been applied in critical Canadian criminology. It is argued that criminologists have oversimplified the relationship between criminal law and state structure in Canada: first, because of their general failure to recognize that intensifying crime control is consensus-promoting, not consensus-threatening, since criminal law and the criminal justice system do not occupy the same position in relation to legitimation processes as do other institutions of the welfare state, such as education and health care; second, because they have assumed a necessary relationship between relative autonomy and the liberalization of criminal justice systems. We need to specify more carefully which types of reform threaten dominant classes and which are irrelevant to them.