ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to examine some of those changes and developments as they are identified by post-Fordism and critically assess their implications for crime and crime control. It identifies some problems and instabilities in the classic welfare state model in the area of crime and crime control, which might be identified as contradictions to be resolved by any transition to a new form of economy, state, social structure. The social stabilisation and cohesion of Fordist welfare state society was to some extent reflected in the proportionate decline of incarceration in the face of non-supervisory and non-disciplinary – in the Foucauldian sense – forms of penality such as fines and community service. The global city is the context for an intensification of this contradiction: a re-fusing of the normal processes of social and economic life with various forms of criminality. The present phase of capitalist development may be a unique, slow and protracted crisis following the long post-war boom.
