Crime and Criminality in a Post-crime World

• In Event: Critical Perspectives on Emergent and Current Issues II

Abstract

The blurring between legitimate and illicit enterprise being generated by digital technologies and digital platforms, seems to be part of a wider dynamic where a fundamental fracturing of consensus around legal and civic order is underway. Just as the misuse of data by commercial platforms now parallels the misuse of data on darknet platforms, disregard for the law amongst lawmakers is echoing disregard for the law amongst lawbreakers. In the post-crime world which results, societal perceptions of the boundary between the criminal and non-criminal are disrupted and redirected. In this paper I explore the contours of post-crime and what it implies for criminological thinking. I evaluate its relationship to the digital platform and consider whether post crime is an inevitable product of post truth.

Author

• Michael McGuire, University of Surrey