ABSTRACT
The reader will be better able to engage with this chapter if I begin by describing the unusual nature of my interrelated theoretical and practical perspectives. Simply stated, I write as a ‘philosopher-cop’, who divides his time between academia and street-level policing. Many readers will correctly imagine that a philosopher-cop must be a ‘fish out of water’ in the realm of policing; however, the reciprocal supposition may not occur to them that I likewise find myself to be no less of an anomalous presence in the world of criminology. In fact, while self-consciously philosophical thinking constitutes a striking incongruity in bureaucratic policing, this is equally so with respect to its place in mainstream criminology. I offer this observation not as biographical trivia, but because I think it represents a telling manifestation of an elective affinity that unites late modernity’s predominant bureaucratic and social scientific approaches to crime.
