Towards a criminology of institutional accountability

• In Event: Critical Criminology 2: Critical Approaches to Policing and Control

Abstract

This paper makes the case for a criminology of institutional accountability, one that attends specifically to the meaning, operation, and organisation of the review mechanisms used to diagnose and recommend the treatment of injustices and harms involving institutional actors. In the UK, such mechanisms include, but are by no means limited to, inquests, official complaint investigations, independent panels, the work of ombuds, Health and Safety Executive investigations, and statutory public inquiries. Criminology has largely left the study of these forms of review and investigation to academics in law, public policy, and politics, partly because these ‘soft legal’ mechanisms⁠ sit outside of the criminal law, and therefore fall outside of the boundaries of the discipline. Yet there is much to be gained from a distinctively criminological approach to accountability — amongst other things, an understanding of accountability as a justice process and critical scrutiny of how soft legal mechanisms might institutionalise the conflicts and injuries they treat.

The paper starts by exploring the bases for a criminology of accountability, and as part of this suggests that we might usefully see soft legal mechanisms as belonging to a distinctive institutional realm, one that (in a UK context, at least) runs in parallel to, often abuts, and, increasingly mops-up after, the criminal justice system. This part of the paper draws upon a set of illustrative examples to help sketch the role and institutional effects of the soft legal sphere. The last part of the paper explores changes to the composition and purpose of the soft legal sphere in the post-1980s period, and points to the drivers of this shift – the emergence of regulatory governance, new citizen-led demands for accountability, and the failures of the criminal justice system.

Author

• Sarah Moore, University of Bath