A Modernizing Critical Criminology?

30 years after the birth of “critical criminology” and the many research centers and journals in which it appeared, this paper discusses the significance of a turning point in society and criminal justice that occurred in 1973 in the main Western countries, particularly the United States. Based on the theory of “long cycles” in political economy, this paper argues that the penal field came to occupy center stage in the symbolism of contemporary society due to the disciplining policies connected to a new “neo-liberal” phase with the ensuing “mass imprisonment” in the United States. Vis-à-vis such developments, this paper discusses what the position of a “critical” kind of criminology was in the 1970s and argues that this position relates to the “repressive hypothesis” later criticized by Michel Foucault, but which nonetheless contributed to the general cultural reorganization of capitalist society rather than to its negation. This paper also examines the idea that criminological ideologies played a “modernizing” role rather than the “critical” one, as was claimed at that time.