ABSTRACT
This chapter explores 'Criminology and Social Theory' at the turn of the millennium, John Braithwaite explicitly characterized criminology and sociology, the disciplines most closely associated with the study of policing, as crumbling relics, smacking of Shelley's Ozymandias. It reviews and criticizes the attempts to develop a fundamentally new perspective on policing. The chapter argues that they misrepresent older perspectives and are mistaken in their characterization of current crises. They arise in part out of a commendable thirst for can-do answers to the manifest problems of order and justice. A lesson of policing history, chapter suggests that democratic policing can be approximated to only in a context of social, not just liberal—and certainly not neo-liberal—democracy. The chapter offers a sketch of the new theories, with some critical comments about their formulation, largely derived from the perspectives that the new theories aim to replace. In the conclusion the case will be made for a social democratic analysis of policing.
