1. The state

• Criminology emerges as soon as the State becomes the main political body in society.

  Hobbes (Leviatan - 1651) deveolps what is the nature of the State: Before the State existed, humans lived in a state of nature, a war of every man against every man. Hobbes conceived the human being in a negative way (we are greedy, untrustful, evil…), that’s why society had to institute the Leviathan, an artificial man that protects and defends society. This is the birth of the contractual theory which essentially explains a contract with security in exchange of individual freedom.
• The State

  Max Weber defines the state in terms of: “An institutionally organised political enterprise will be called a state if, and to the extent that, administrative staff can lay claim to a monopoly of legitimate physical force in the execution of its orders.” Then Pierre Bourdieu adds: “(…) lay claim to a monopoly of legitimate physical force and symbolique”

  Essentially, the state is the central bank of symbolic credit (granting the value of an academic title, an identity card, a certificate…).
• What is the state?

  central bank of symbolic credit
• Criminologist talk about ‘governance’, ‘management’, ‘culture of control’, but barely about the state as the central agency making laws and controlling society.
• Changes in the ways the state controls society:

  • From welfare to risk.
  • Changes in criminal law aimed at dealing with new categories of powerful offenders (trafickers, terrorism…).
  • The blurring of the domestic and global territory as sites of control (cybercrime).