ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses British criminology's conceptualisation of, and relationship to, the state. If we take "criminology" as a coterminous with self-avowed criminologists then, of course, it dates back only to the 1870s. The "science of police" was a much broader intellectual enterprise than what has come to be understood as "classical criminology". The content, conditions of existence and implications of the programme of positivist criminology have been so definitively analysed recently (Garland, 1985a and b; Radzinowicz and Hood, 1986) that no more is needed than a brief summary of its relationship to the state. During the late 1960s British criminology began to experience a proliferating babble of critiques and proposed new programmes for theory and research. As one commentator remarked. One of the key British works of Marxist criminology has claimed that: "Most criminological theories—including much of 'radical criminology'—have no concept or theory of the state.".
