Abstract Crime and Civilization presents a history of the rise of criminology in the first part of the nineteenth century. The story begins in 1827, in Paris, when the first modern national crime statistic was published. The Compte général de l’administration de la justice criminelle en France was a paradigmatic game changer, sending shock waves across European intellectual circles interested in the analysis of crime. The new concept of national crime statistics made it possible to test theories and hypotheses about crime using a shared data instrument. Much of the initial research and reception triggered by the new instrument reflected a core theme of the Enlightenment tradition—the question of how the civilizing process impacted human morality. This cultural context had several variations: British parliamentarians struggling to civilize their ‘bloody code’, French liberals supporting technical progress against royalist and religious backlash, and German lawyers raising the flag of their religious and moral Kultur against secular civilization. Yet they all embraced the concept of national crime statistics as research-enabling innovation. While the French ignited the flame, the story of the first criminology is a European affair transcending national borders. Crime and Civilization argues that the history of criminology should be approached from the perspective of data and instruments, complementing the traditional story based on theories and explanatory shifts from ‘classicism’ to ‘positivism’ and beyond. The book is a prequel to Discovery of Hidden Crime (2011), which inspected the rise of the crime survey in the twentieth century. 

Crime and Civilization

Abstract This chapter discusses the origins of data-driven criminology from the point of view of the prison and criminal justice reform movements. The study period witnessed the rise of both criminology and criminal justice somptudies, and these were intimately connected. A central frame provided by the criminal justice reformers was the ‘gentlification’ process, referring to people’s increasing distaste for harsh punishments in the context of a drop in violence. The new data gave novel assets to argue for this frame. The data–policy link was bridged by the halo argument, connecting good policies with other good policies, and the foil argument, using foreign lands as useful backdrops in criminal justice policy battles. The latter concept draws on David Nelken’s seminal work on the foil argument and generalizes it to the historical origins of criminal justice research. Thus, some of the first generation of data-driven criminologists saw the US as a Nordic paradise, an epitome of humane and rational criminal justice. 

Anchoring criminal justice to facts

List of Figures

Abstract This chapter deals with the Genevan connection in the emergence of the first data-driven criminology. This contribution is linked to the names of Alphonse de Candolle (1806–93) and Pellegrino Rossi (1787–1848), the law professor of Italian background. Rossi examined how crime statistics were embedded in the societies and cultures of their origin, formulating a social–cultural perception theory of crime. De Candolle, in turn, perfected the skill of statistics interpretation by engaging in detailed analysis of the recording ladder—the social and legal thresholds an act had to cross to reach statistics. He did this to enable, rather than to preclude, the use of administrative crime data for research purposes. While doing this, he formulated the basic axiom of routine activity theory, pointing out the logical conditions for a crime to take place: motivated offender, suitable target, and lack of obstacles for the commission of crime. 

Insight from critique: the Genevans

Abstract This chapter summarizes the main findings and argument of the book. It starts by discussing two interpretive frames in the history of criminology: the theory linking criminology to the fear of ‘dangerous classes’ and the alternative interpretation proposed in this book, which explains the rise of criminology by the collision of the civilization theoretical tradition with the new instrument of research-enabling statistics. The chapter summarizes the key external conditions of the emergence of criminology and moves on to discuss the role of internal factors by asking the question whether empirical contact changed the developmental logic of the discipline. The chapter concludes by noting the caveats and silences of criminology’s first, constitutive data revolution, such as the role of the individual and the use of qualitative sources. 

The origins of criminology

Abstract In classical Latin, luxuria means ‘desire for luxury’; it is linked with the ideas of excess and deviation from a standard, and in most cases labelled as a vice which contrasts with the innate frugal nature of the Romans. Indeed, Latin authors see it not as endemic, but as an import from the East in the aftermath of military conquests, and as a cause of fatal decline. After dealing with etymological and semantic issues, the book discusses the influence of Greek culture on the Roman concept and the peculiar characteristics of Roman luxuria. Roman views on luxuria are analysed through close readings of selected passages, in their historical evolution from Cato the Elder, who regards it as the opposite of the ideal way of life of the Romans, to the Christian poet Prudentius, who represents it in an allegorical fight with Sobriety. Attention is paid both to single authors and to literary genres, such as historiography and satire. Particular consideration is given to the rhetorical device of personification, which can be traced from the first appearances of luxuria in Latin literature to the ones in late antiquity. Much space is devoted to Seneca the Younger, whose work is very much concerned with this passion, and who both defends himself from the charge of luxuria and violently attacks it in others, describing it as the archenemy of philosophical life. Along the centuries, the focus of this vice shifts from the economic sphere, and the idea of the waste of money, to the erotic one, to the point that in the Christian world luxuria becomes one of the Seven Capital Sins, representing the vice of lust. 

Roman Luxuria

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Roman Luxuria