Suchergebnisse

Discussion about the criminality of immigrants is rising due to the high mobility of people. Today, the deviant immigrant is a topic in political and media discourse in most Western European countries. Smuggling immigrants, Muslim terrorists, women who are prostituted from eastern European countries, juvenile gangs of ethnic origin are images of foreign criminals. In this direction, the policy towards foreign deviants is changing. Instead of protectionism and protection, now the dominant themes are security and protection from assumed foreign risks. The image of the deviant immigrant opens up the racist discourse, as well. Racist notions are not primarily focused on the perceived biological inferiority of the other, but on the security threat that he/she represents in the community. Hence, the penal discourse on immigrant crime or the demands for the punishment of immigrants is seen as a protection of nationality and national interests from threatening foreign elements. This means that public attitudes towards immigrants and immigrant crime are also shaped by the generally punitive climate in late-modern societies. We can therefore agree that migration issues are increasingly defined as security issues that are treated by the penal system, while refugees and asylum seekers become security rather than a humanitarian issue. The above issues are special subject of elaboration and analysis within this article.

The topic of crime and its control has been continually present on the social, political and research arena and has been also a subject to a number of debates and scientific researches. As the crime and the fear from the crime change on local, regional and on global level, simultaneously the social reactions and the forms of crime control also change. Their study, especially in the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, shows more changes in the reforms of the criminal justice system, which are in line with alternations occurring not only with the state of crime, but also in social, economic, political and security circumstances in other societies. In the context of the 70's, the crime control was influenced by the so-called Penal coercionist, rehabilitation of offenders and the development of the state of welfare due to the failure of the state to deliver the anticipated justice. Thus two paradigms were developed: first, that nothing helps and the second - justice has been threatened. In that period, influenced by the structural social processes, (we think here of globalization, unequal distribution of wealth at all levels in the world, migratory movements, terrorism and cyclical recessions of capitalism that actually generate crime,) there are conflicts between the objectives of penalties (prevention, deterrence, rehabilitation and second, the realization of justice), the rights of offenders and the public interest, the legal principles, the functions of the police and the objectives of post-penal and social work. These processes produce not only changes in the condition of the crime, or its increase and change, but also represent changes in the social policy as well as in the criminal justice system. As a result, in the period of late modernism, the problem of crime control is mainly associated with the security of the society as well as the increased risks to the feeling of insecurity that caused the increased repressive policies by the criminal justice system. At the same time the policies of risk management and the application of new technologies are implemented. They are part of the situational approach in the crime control. Basically, the new technologies for monitoring and detection of offenders place the citizens as a potential object of observation. In this context, the police is less concerned with the Crime Prevention which relies more on new information and telecommunications as well as on other means of technology. This technological development is necessary, but at the same time it shifts away the police from citizens and their security needs, resulting in its reticence towards the public as well as implementation of repressive methods. Relying on the Law enforcement model or on what is now called the establishment of law and order, the police is being militarized growing into a serious threat both to the citizens and to the development of democratic processes. The police has thus transformed itself into the main force in the hands of the powerful for the retention of status quo. Therefore, such a social control of crime cannot adequately respond to its challenges and there is a discrepancy between the punishment, which remains the prerogative of the State as part of the traditional criminal justice and the crime control that follows the state justice.