The Birth of Public Order Policy
- 1 July 2004
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Race & Class
- Vol. 46 (1) , 30-52
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0306396804045513
Abstract
Over the last twenty years, the nature of the rule of law and the basis on which nation states employ force has been changing fundamentally. The distinction between what is criminal, to be dealt with by the legal and justice system, and what creates a ‘perception of insecurity’ - formerly to be dealt with by social policy - is being eroded at both the macro (‘war on terror’) and micro (‘public order’) levels. This paves the way for the unbridled use of state force, in the first instance, and the criminalisation of behaviours that are not necessarily illegal, in the second. Fear becomes a controlling mechanism for the maintenance of the social order and any element of non-conformity is construed as a threat.Keywords
This publication has 5 references indexed in Scilit:
- Governing security for common goodsInternational Journal of the Sociology of Law, 2003
- The European Union and Internal SecurityPublished by Springer Nature ,2003
- The Culture of ControlPublished by University of Chicago Press ,2001
- SecurityPublished by Walter de Gruyter GmbH ,1997
- Malign Neglect Race, Crime, And Punishment In AmericaPublished by Oxford University Press (OUP) ,1995