Thursday April 3 2014 LSJ 375 Day 2 The Creation of Crime Exoctizing the Familiar If you look at something as if you were seeing it for the rst time you look at it in a different light archeology of the present to dig in and take samples of the present metaphor being a tourist in your own home Slide 1 The Creation of Crime How do we create crime How do different kinds of texts represent crime What do those representations revel about the nature of crime What do they leave hidden distorted or unspoken Jorge Luis Borges Man on Pink Corner and The End id pp 168 170 Implications Criminology 40 3 711 35 McDowall Test of Nonlinear Dynamics in US Homicide Time Series and their Wender Chapter from Cultural Criminology Unleashed Slide 2 Crime is Ontologically Real Crime is Ontologically real that is it truly exists But its underlying nature is much more complicated than we usually assume The practical purpose of the criminal justice system is to GET CLOSE to crime in meaningful and practical ways Our theoretical approach to crime determines our practical response to it Why Because approaching drawing near is always inseparable from intention inseparable from intention the stance we take towards crime determines how we deal with it Approach is Borges an astonishing view of the emotional moral and social essence of murder McDowall an equally astonishing view though for very different reasons CJS job is to get close to crime in mays that are meaningful and have practical effects every single form of praxis requires you get close to a certain thing in a certain way there are better and worse ways of doing so with any phenomenon how you approach anything determines how you dictate what you do once you are there framework determines what we do with it the same phenomenon gets framed in different ways and the theoretical Borges shocking and surprising McDowall dry emotionless sterile detached all of these are about people murdering other people with criminal intent they are converging on the phenomenon of murder in different ways 1 Thursday April 3 2014 Slide 3 McDowall Uses epidemiological models of contagion to explain changes over time of homicide rates Linear models are simply but they only tell a limited part of the story Is change really xed and proportionate excogenous caused from outside unemployment excogenous shocks the factors that affect the homicide rates ex rising are simple It makes for a straight forward style Why do most criminologists like linear models they are easy to put together and Non Linear models chance can be self generating random and explosive rather than proportionate come from the inside it is important to look at things that do not come from the outside but instead how changes might occur from within important to understand murder understand the mechanism of murder there are nuances that go on at a lower level which is why we have to Homicide rates can vary for both linear as well as non linear reasons does this really surprise you The model of contagion and epidemics treats crime as if it were disease But is it What s going on here Slide 4 The Difference Between McDowall and Borges The difference between McDowall and Borges isn t what you likely think it is Compare their respective approaches Two narratives about murder one ction literary and the other non ction scienti c Both narratives draw on the reality of homicide to tell a story yet which story gets closer to this actual reality McDowall s article as ction full of rhetorical and literary devices such as metaphor white noise walk etc ction can come up in many different contexts Legal Fiction a construct of law which for purposes of legal procedure treats actual circumstances as if they were something different from what they actually are has a procedural value actually are treats actual circumstances as if they were something different from what they McDowall when he writes this his article although outwardly non ction in a certain sense he is drawing on real world data He uses metaphors but is not putting on the table that he is doing the same things that Borges is doing Borges turns narrative expectations on their head Yes there are differences in genres but on a deeper level all texts are ction insofar in that they are creattions of the human imagination 2 Thursday April 3 2014 Slide 5 The Corporation Example the corporation as person Not literally true but enables various legal procedures establishment liability etc Back to McDowall we treat murder 8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 AS IF it were an abstract mathematical entity or disease But of course its not What gets lost in translation Here is the real difference between Borges and McDowall Fiction forming ordering and representation not merely falsehood Crime is real yet every approach to it is an imperfective narrative Always be mindful of your narrative and its premises JW s chapter tries to reveal what gets lost in translation 3