ABSTRACT
Muncie (2000) sounds a note of caution for the zemiological project by observing that the successful incorporation of a social harm agenda into mainstream criminological discourse could lead to the unwelcome and totally unintended criminalisation of all ‘undesirable behaviour’ by the criminal justice system noting that, for example, notions of community safety were first promoted as a means of liberalising crime prevention policy but have been subsequently appropriated by New Labour as a means of targeting the ‘antisocial’ and used to justify all manner of punitive interventions from curfews to custody. From a zemiological perspective these emergent discourses do not challenge the notion of ‘crime’, but have become incorporated by it because they continue to fail to recognise the multifaceted nature of harm.
