Critique of the Legal Order: Crime Control in Capitalist Society

by Quinney,Richard

• ISBN13: 9780765807977
• ISBN10: 0765807971
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2001-05-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Originally published thirty years ago, Critique of the Legal Order remains highly relevant for the twenty-first century. Here Richard Quinney provides a critical look at the legal order in capitalist society. Using a traditional Marxist perspective, he argues that the legal order is not intended to reduce crime and suffering, but to maintain class differences and a social order that mainly benefits the ruling class.Quinney challenges modern criminologists to examine their own positions. As "ancillary agents of power", criminologists provide information that governing elites use to manipulate and control those who threaten the system. Quinney's original and thorough analysis of "crime control bureaucracies" and the class basis of such bureaucracies anticipates subsequent research and theorizing about the "crime control industry", a system that aims at social control of marginalized populations, rather than elimination of the social conditions that give rise to crime. He forcefully argues that technology applied to a "war against crime", together with academic scholarship, is used to help maintain social order to benefit a Quling class.Quinney also suggests alternatives. Anticipating the work of Noam Chomsky, he suggests we must first overcome a powerful media that provides a "general framework" that serves as the "boundary of expression". Chomsky calls this the manufacture of consent by providing necessary illusions. Quinney calls for a critical philosophy that enables us to transcend the current order and seek an egalitarian socialist order based upon true democratic principles. This care study for criminologists should interest those with a critical perspective on contemporarysociety.

Author Biography

Randall G. Shelden is professor in the department of criminal justice, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Transaction Edition	ix
Preface	xxv
A Critical Philosophy of Legal Order	1	(16)
The Positivistic Mode	2	(3)
The Social Constructionist Mode	5	(3)
The Phenomenological Mode	8	(3)
Critical Philosophy	11	(4)
Developing a Critical Philosophy of Legal Order	15	(2)
Knowledge and Order	17	(34)
The Search for Order	18	(4)
Sociology of Law	22	(4)
Criminology	26	(6)
Scholarship in the Service of Social Control	32	(11)
Social Science and the Violence Commission	43	(4)
Behavior Manipulation and Control	47	(4)
Preservation of Domestic Order by the Ruling Class	51	(44)
The Class Structure of Capitalist Society	51	(4)
Law as an Arm of the Ruling Class	55	(5)
Class Basis of the President's Crime Commission	60	(8)
The Riot Commission and the Violence Commission	68	(7)
The Omnibus Crime Bill	75	(7)
Shaping Domestic Policy: The CED	82	(4)
Crime Control Bureaucracies	86	(7)
The Revolutionary Consequences of the Capitalis Crisis	93	(2)
Crime Control in the Capitalist State	95	(42)
The Capitalist State	95	(4)
Legislation of Crime Control	99	(6)
Crime Control Bureaucracy: LEAA	105	(6)
Legal Repression by the Justice Department	111	(8)
The Technology of Crime Control	119	(5)
War on Crime: Strategy and Action	124	(8)
Reform, Repression, and Resistance	132	(5)
Ideology of Legal Order	137	(28)
Legal Ideology in Capitalist Society	138	(2)
The Moral Basis of the Legal Order	140	(3)
Civil Liberties and Selective Repression	143	(6)
Shaping Public Opinion about Crime	149	(6)
Mass Media in the Transmission of Official Ideology	155	(7)
Transcending the Official Ideology	162	(3)
Toward a Socialist Society	165	(34)
The Contradictions of Capitalism	166	(2)
Reform as Adaptive Mechanism	168	(2)
Criminal Justice Reforms	170	(11)
The Oppression of Correctional Reform	181	(5)
The Socialist Alternative	186	(6)
Emerging Revolutionary Consciousness and the Counterrevolution	192	(5)
Struggle for a Socialist Society	197	(2)
Index	199