ABSTRACT
This chapter examines one aspect of the profound changes in crime, control and criminal justice over the last thirty years, the mysterious disappearance of social democratic criminology. This was a way of understanding and responding to crime that was widespread, perhaps dominant, for much of the twentieth century. The term social democratic criminology has been used before, but it has never been a self-espoused label. After the First World War, with the establishment of Bolshevik government in the Soviet Union, the term social democracy came to be contrasted with communism. Social democratic criminologists were well aware of the difficulties in conceptualizing crime, and did not simply take for granted the categories of criminal law. In current political debate the language of morality has been captured by the religious Right in the United States, and by Daily Mail reading or fearing circles in the United Kingdom, restricting it to an extremely narrow conception of 'traditional family values'.
