Print

---

British-Irish Section of the European Group for the 
Study of Deviance and Social Control 

¡§Things Can Only Get Better" :
Crime and Deviance after Ten Years of New Labour

11-13 April, 2007, London, SOAS

Call for papers

A shift to the right on ¡¥law and order¡¦ - under then shadow Home Secretary 
Tony Blair - was a decisive moment in the creation of New Labour. But few 
of us imagined how far to the right that shift would take a ¡¥Labour¡¦ 
government. As May 2007 marks the tenth anniversary of New Labour in power, 
the change in the crime, law and order landscape has been staggering ¡V 
hundreds of new criminal offences, record numbers of police officers, gaols 
bursting at the seams, the criminalisation of ¡¥anti-social behaviour¡¦, and 
a steady erosion of civil liberties in a society characterised by 
increasing levels of inequality. 

This year, then, represents an opportune moment for critical social 
scientists and campaigners both to evaluate the effects of ten years of New 
Labour government on crime, law and order, and to identify the nature and 
sources of resistance to its regressive agenda. To this end, the British-
Irish Section of the ¡¥European Group¡¦ welcomes papers on a number of 
themes, including, but not limited to, the following: 

„«	The criminalisation of political dissent and spectacles 
of 'difference'
„«	Children¡¦s ¡¥responsibilities¡¦ and children's 'rights'?
„«	The conscription of British criminologists into New Labour's 
popular authoritarian project
„«	The 'war on terror' and the erosion of civil liberties
„«	Business, crime and the deregulation agenda
„«	The expansion, commercialisation, and failures of incarceration
„«	Poverty and social marginalisation
„«	Governance and social regulation of 'race', 'age', 'gender', 
and ¡¥sexuality¡¦ in late modern societies
„«	Violence in contemporary Britain
„«	Human trafficking: modern forms of slavery
„«	Criminalising and legitimising violence against women
„«	¡¥Civilisation' and the New World Order'

Please submit abstracts of 100-200 words by February 28th to Steve Tombs at 
[log in to unmask] 

For further details of the conference, please contact one of the following:
Mary Corcoran		[log in to unmask]
John Moore		[log in to unmask]
Christina Pantazis	[log in to unmask]
Steve Tombs 		[log in to unmask]
Tony Ward		[log in to unmask]

Further details at www.jmahousing.com/London_Deviancy_2007.html