ABSTRACT
There is today a widespread questioning of the notion of responsibility. The issues to which this term refers are many and diverse and it is important not to confuse them. In this chapter I will attempt to confront the re-emergence of the theme of responsibility within the bodies of knowledge concerned with inquiry into the nature of crime. Such re-emergence is, as I shall seek to show, related to socio-cultural changes of vast importance, of which the crisis in these disciplines themselves is only one, marginal, aspect. This crisis refers to the development of a field of institutional uncertainty which one tries to confrontin this as well as in other cases-by means of a not always well thought out ‘ethical’ vocabulary. The question of responsibility is, on the other hand, strictly connected, as will be seen, to ways of defining, conceiving of, and studying the so-called criminal question.
