Communities, identities and criminology

The subject of social identity in contemporary western societies is an area that has received considerable research interest. While traditionally class, gender and ‘race’/ethnic identities have generated substantial social scientific research attention, other group collectivities are now receiving greater focus, specifically those relating to sexual orientation, religion, disability and age. At the same time, work on identities includes a focus upon the construction of self in late modernity since it is argued that increasing individualisation means that human identity is a task under continual construction. Communities, identities and crime illustrates how the construction of social identities might best be conceptualised as consisting of the interplay, tensions and contradictions between modernity's ‘imperative of order’, including the expression of collective identities and interests, and the fragmentation, individualisation, and fluidity of identities associated with conditions of late modernity. Both processes are at play, and serve to produce, perpetuate, deconstruct and influence the nature of, identity formations within particular contexts.

This book further highlights the fact that equality and diversity issues feature significantly in the policies and practices of all criminal justice agencies. The concern shown towards gender, ‘race’/ethnicity, faith, sexual orientation, disability and age reflects wider social processes occurring in contemporary western societies, whereby questions of identity are increasingly important. The phrase ‘equality and specificity within diversity’ might be used to capture contemporary developments within the criminal justice system. Traditionally, there has been a hierarchy between different groupings in terms of the levels of protection and research afforded them, with ‘race’/ethnicity and gender generating most attention. However, recent trends suggest that this hierarchy is levelling out, so that minority groupings in relation to faith, sexuality, disability and age are attracting more research and policy attention. At the same time, there is a growing awareness that the distinct voices and experiences of certain specific groups of individuals are obscured within such broad-based approaches, and so increasingly, more nuanced approaches are being adopted, whereby the needs of specific communities are being taken into account.

Communities, identities and crime also considers the relevance of social identities to researching the social world. It appears that, despite the temporal and sliding nature of identities, it might be argued that identities nonetheless constitute the sites at which the social world is experienced and the sites through which power relations are at play.