Theoretical Criminology

Sensemaking is an ongoing process members of organizations engage in to explicate their world. When faced with changes in their environment, members try to make sense of uncertainties and disruptions and `enact' their interpretations into the world to give it a sense of order. This article draws on a longitudinal study of police recruits to describe how officers make sense of reforms that have considerably altered the field of policing. It argues that sensemaking provides a processual frame that helps connect Bourdieu's concepts of field and habitus : it describes how agents translate changes in the field into shared understandings and values that inform the occupational habitus. Sensemaking is thus an important element for the theorizing of police culture and practice.

The problem of policing is often portrayed as providing sufficient personnel to sate demand. Pluralism, however, complicates the issue since the public disagree among themselves over which activities or individuals should be policed. In turn, police priorities may differ from these demands, inciting public discontent. In these circumstances, how can public policing sustain its legitimacy? Lessons can be learnt from how political theories have grappled with pluralism and legitimacy. This article analyses how three major political theorists, John Rawls, Michael Walzer and Friedrich Hayek, dealt with these issues. It mines their insights to nominate the principle of non-domination, defined as freedom from interference on an arbitrary basis, as best suited to justify policing in an era of pluralism.

This article examines five perspectives on how rules relate to police power and discretion. Each perspective is appreciated for its heuristic value, depending upon the types of rules in question and the pragmatic circumstances faced in police decisions. At the same time, it is argued that policing is undergoing rapid transformation involving a new division of labor with regulatory agencies and private police, an attendant reconfiguration of the principles, standards and procedures of criminal law and the rise of surveillance-based control without the law. This `counter-law' environment of policing networks, legal exceptions and surveillance technologies is increasingly relied upon to ensure that the police are watched as well as watchers and the bearers of their own control.

This article aims at giving crime-film research a stronger sense of purpose by asking: How do crime films relate to criminology? Using the example of recent films about sex crimes, I argue that crime films should be conceptualized as an aspect of popular criminology, and popular criminology as an aspect of criminology itself. If we define criminology as the study of crime and criminals, it becomes clear that film is one of the primary sources through which people get their ideas about the nature of crime. Some of those ideas echo academic criminology, while others bring to bear ethical, philosophical and psychological perspectives beyond the scope of academic research. By recognizing that popular criminology is integral to criminology, we can invigorate the study of crime films—and criminology itself.