ABSTRACT
Everyone will have noticed that the language of politicians, policemen, and the media, is to speak of problems of law and order. The assumption is not only that law and order are linked and connected but, more particularly, that disorder is pathological and unacceptable. The common response is to call for its elimination, often by advocating stricter policing, harsher laws and stronger penalties. Many people believe that we live in a time of great disorder and lawlessness and consequently that it has been necessary to increase police person power consistently since the Second World War; that, notwithstanding this and increased expenditure upon police equipment and prisons, the crime rate continues to rise and outbreaks of disorder, whether caused by drunken urban or rural youths, disaffected urban minorities, feckless new age travellers, or even (in the past) vicious strikers, threaten the ‘very fabric of our society’. The accepted, if implicit, premiss, is that disorder is disfunctional and pathological and that a central role for law lies in its control and elimination.
