CRIME AND SOCIETY

Author: Jerzy Sarnecki
Year: 2010
Publisher: Studentlitteratur
Language: Swedish

Crime, especially organised crime and gun violence, stands as the preeminent political concern in Sweden today. As always when a subject engages a significant audience, facts and data quickly succumb to guesses, prejudice, and bravado.

Motivated by this, I picked up a book that had been standing for a couple of years untouched on my bookshelf; “Brottsligheten och samhället” (not available in English but roughly translatable as “Crime and Society”) by Swedish criminologist Jerzy Sarnecki. As this particular edition was already out of print by the time I acquired it, I acknowledge its obsolescence and its obvious inability to address recent developments in Swedish crime. However, dismissing it as irrelevant would also be misguided as its methodology, models, and theories remain applicable rendering the insights into global and national trends, processes, and dynamics in criminal behaviour enduringly pertinent.

Across 9 chapters, Sarnecki’s book offers a broad, comprehensive, and basic overview of the field of criminology intended as an entry level textbook for Swedish university students.

Chapter 1: What is criminology?
Chapter 2: The starting points of criminological thinking
Chapter 3: The scope and characteristics of crime
Chapter 4: Socioecological and learning theories
Chapter 5: Strain, sub-culture theories, gangs, and criminal networks
Chapter 6: Symbolic interactionism, conspiracy to commit crime, postmodern criminology, conflict theory, and critical criminology.
Chapter 7: Theories of control, routine activities, and structures of opportunity
Chapter 8: Crime levels and societal flux
Chapter 9: Penalty

All chapters are characterised by the accessibility expected of an introductory textbook, while still being able to delve into certain theories and models with some depth. However, as a layman, I am immediately confronted with two problems.

1.      Sarnecki introduces criticism sections for some but not all the theories he presents and even where they are included, they seem cursory and superficial. Moreover, in some cases, he injects his own personal preferences and convictions arguably misplaced in a textbook intended for impartiality. Argumentation and propositions of this sort would be more appropriately saved for articles and seminars.

2.      Acknowledging the book’s tendentious inclinations, readers are left uncertain whether Sarnecki includes all the relevant research in this book or omits some for personal reasons.

Even so, the book is highly instructive, showing the complexity of the area of criminology and the wealth of knowledge researchers have accumulated. Chapters 4 and 5 in particular caught my attention, given the fierce debates and heavy politicisation surrounding the origins of criminal behaviour in contemporary Swedish public discourse. Sarnecki maintains, that introducing biology or ethnicity into the discussion of criminal behaviour is unhelpful and cites well-documented and repeated findings by the Chicago school and various socioecological studies as compelling evidence.

When reading about criminology, it is important to bear in mind that the discipline does not, and probably never will, possess the precision to predict who will commit a crime on an individual level. Nor does it claim to possess such ambitions. Its utility lies in providing tools to identify risk factors and to suggest countermeasures to remove the risk factors, not the individuals exposed to them.

In conclusion, I would advise anyone professing to know anything about crime and criminology to familiarise themselves with the works of any recognised criminologist. While many of the theories and conclusions that Sarnecki brings up have been and continue to be contested, fully in compliance with the very nature of academia, no one who is moderately literate and possesses at least a rudimentary capacity for rational thought, will accept “look around” or “my neighbour’s niece’s bike was stolen two years ago” as valid arguments. In the contemporary information society, where knowledge and facts are available at a keystroke, ignorance is a choice.