Seminar:Governing through Crime & the Culture of Fear…27 Sept.

Tuesday, 25 September 2007, 3-5 pm
Adam Smith Building, Room T217
Prof. Jonathan Simon
Center for Criminal Justice, University of California,
Berkeley

Governing through Crime: How the Fear
of Crime Created a Culture of Fear and
Transformed American Democracy

How and when did our everyday world become dominated by fear, citizens treated as potential criminals, non-citizens assumed to be criminals? It starts when social problems are reconceptualized as crime problems, assigning fault and imposingconsequences. Our schools, our families, our workplaces, and our communities are increasingly being governed through crime. In this seminar Prof. Simon traces this pattern through successive American policies and explores the extent to which they have seeped into the policy and experience of the UK. He concludes with a call for passive citizens to become engaged partners by coming together to produce our own security, freeing ourselves from a logic of domination by others and from the fear that currently rules our everyday life. All welcome.

For more information email s.armstrong@lbss.gla.ac.uk.

A PDF of the poster can be downloaded here.