Manuel Lopez-Rey - Crime: An Analytical Appraisal

In 15 Volumes

First published in 1970

by Routledge

Reprinted in 1998, 2001, 2002

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2007

1970 Manuel Lpez-Rey

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Crime: An Analytical Appraisal

ISBN 0-415-17733-2

The Sociology of Law and Criminology: 15 Volumes

ISBN 0-415-17832-0

The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes

ISBN 0-415-17838-X

Publisher's Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

Manuel Lpez-Rey, LL.D. University of Madrid, post-graduate studies in criminology and related fields in Germany, Austria and France. Formerly County Judge, Professor of Criminal Law, Universities of Madrid, La Laguna and Salamanca, Member of the Commission for Codification and Director-General of Prisons in Spain. From 1946 to the end of 1965 with the United Nations, first as Chief of the Research and Treaties Section of the Narcotics Division and from 1952 as Chief of the Section of Social Defence; later as Senior Adviser on Social Defence in the Middle East. Professor Lpez-Rey has represented the Secretary-General on several occasions at Congresses and regional meetings devoted to social defence and was instrumental in the organization of the United Nations Institute for Asia and the Far East for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders. As visiting Professor he has lectured in many parts of the world, and in the last thirty eight years he has become acquainted with the penal institutions of well over sixty countries. He has published several books and more than a hundred papers on penal and criminological matters. At present he is Director of the Criminological Research at the Social Science Research Center of the University of Puerto Rico and Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge, England.

What crime has lost in originality it has gained in extent and gravity. This is sometimes denied by those more interested in praising the status quo than in the objective appraisal of reality. Without seeking dramatic effects the fact is that in spite of scientific and material progress, or what is regarded as such, crime is an intractable problem in most of the developed countries and eventually it will be the same in others, developed or not. There are three reasons for this: crime has become a socio-political problem, criminology is to a great extent the result of professional aggrandizement, and the system of criminal justice is unable to cope with crime or criminals.

Crime will, in all probability, become more socio-political in character in the near future owing to the increase in number of dissatisfied youth and minority groups, and of corruption, so frequently linked to political patterns of every sort; the increasing number of crimes committed under cover of official position through political ideologies or as a sequel to revolutionary action and the expanding gap between the privileged and the under-privileged in developed as well as in developing countries. This means that what is usually called conventional crime, still the main subject of contemporary criminology, is only a relatively small part of the whole.

Criminology has not yet become a scientific and applied branch of knowledge. While its contribution cannot be denied in some respects, one may ask if humanitarian reasons have not sometimes been a more important factor than criminological theories in criminal policy progress. Criminology still persists in styling itself a natural or naturalistic science by borrowing more and more concepts, methods and techniques from natural sciences. This ignores the fact that natural science is unable to provide the sociopolitical approach at present required by the extent of crime. One may go further and say that naturalistic explanations of crime are philosophically an absurdity and have led to the present criminological impasse. I am fully aware that many professionals will smile at my bringing in philosophy, but the truth is that philosophy, particularly phenomenology, must constitute the substratum of any study of socio-political phenomena, of which crime is nowadays one of the most significant. Although experience and research are needed to gain knowledge of these phenomena they must be accompanied by logic, rigorous philosophical appraisal and political ideals, the latter not to be understood as those of a particular party or faction. With the exception of mathematics every science possesses its own philosophical and political problems which must be linked to the general ones. It is to be regretted that as a rule sociologists, psychologists and criminologists have ignored those affecting their respective disciplines. Empirical knowledge and judgment, so much praised nowadays, are less scientific than is generally supposed. What is mostly left in the criminological field is an impressive array of techniques and instruments aiming at an illusory measurement of crime, at the justification of a particular theory or sub-theory or at the expansion of often repetitive research programmes.