SURVEILLANCE AND.
CRIMINAL STATISTICS:
HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF
GOVERNMENTALITY
Mathieu Deflem
Men have dreamed of liberating machines. But there are no machines
of freedom, by definition.
~Michel Foucault
In this paper, examine the history of criminal statistics in Germany
and the United States from the nineteenth until the early twentieth
century. Theoretically, my analysis is inspired by Michel Foucault's
perspective of governmentality and its relevance for analyses of risk-
bbased social control that stress preventive and predictive strategies
of surveillance. While I do not trace the immediate historical contexts
of these contemporary practices, I argue that their rationality,
specifically the emphasis on prevention and prediction, was already
‘Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Volume 17, pages
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developed in the ninetcenth century. | further maintain that criminal
statistics represented an important dimension of the nationalization
of state power, but that it at the same time allowed for a functional
transmission of information across the jurisdictions of different
nation-states. With this analysis, I seek to bring out the relevance
of the governmental characteristics of criminal statistics, particularly
its conflictual relationship with legal structures and developments of
rights and justice.
GOVERNMENTALITY AND THE
SOCIETY OF SURVEILLANCE
In his famous Discipline and Punish (1975a) Michel Foucault
suggested that the disciplinary panopticon aims to make crime
impossible through the constant surveillance of the prisoner.
Foucault also argued that panopticism, as function, had since its
development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gradually
spread into society at large (Foucault 1975, pp. 27, 80, 1976, 1976c,
p. 39, 1977c, p. 156). In his work on governmentality (a neologism
for governmental rationality), Foucault explained how and why this
dissemination or general diffusion of power had come about. While
Foucault did not develop a full-fledged theory of governmentality,
amore than less coherent picture of Foucault's thoughts on the matter
can be retrieved from some of his course summaries (1976d, 19786,
1979a [translations 1976, 1978d, 1979b], 1981b), the introductory
volume to The History of Sexuality series (1976a), papers and
interviews (1977a, 1978, 1981a, 1982, 1984b, 1984c), and a
published lecture (1978a; see also Dean 1994; Gordon 1991; Haroche
1994).
The Art of Governing
Foucault defines governmentality as “the way in which the conduct
of a whole of individuals is found implicated, in an ever more marked
fashion, in the exercise of sovereign power” (Foucault 19786, p. 101)
The central theme in Foucault's notion is that power does not exclude
people but that, on the contrary, power centers on the population and
its truth by presupposing individuals as living subjects (Foucault 1976a,
pp. 137-139). Historically, Foucault (1978a, pp. 88-91) argues,
Surveillance and Criminal Statistics 151
governmentality finds its origins in European political thought of the
sixteenth century. Then the notion developed that power concerns
everything that is and happens, all events, actions, behavior and
opinions, because the state's wealth and strength were perceived to be
dependent on the conditions of the population (Foucault 19752, pp.
213-216, 1978a, pp. 99-101). This form of governing is at once totalizing
and individualizing, involving technologies of domination of others as
well as an ‘ethics’ as the governing of the self (Foucault 19822, 1982b).
Society and individual merge in governmentality, obliterating “the
binary and all-encompassing opposition between rulers and ruled”
(Foucault 1976a, p. 94; see Foucault 1978e, pp. 102-106).
In nineteenth-century Europe, Foucault (1978a, pp. 91-94)
explains, the governmental form of power is rediscovered and gains
dominance over the Machiavellian concept of the singular “Prince.”
Politics is seen in terms of an efficient economy, not iargeted at
territory and citizens, but estimating the fertility of territories and
the health and movements of the population. Territory is treated as
space with certain qualities (climate, irrigation), and people are dealt
with in terms of their relationships with each other and with things
(accidents, deviance, death). The end and finality of governmental
power resides in the subjects and objects ic manages (Foucault 19782,
p. 95). Governmentality thus breaks with any form of legalism. A
Jaw must represent, not what is right and wrong, but what is useful
for and what harms society (Foucault 1974, pp. 589-593, 1978a, pp.
92-93), In order to concretize this form of political technology, the
population had to be known, that is, it had to be unraveled in terms
of its distribution around a mean (“what does the population on
average do?”) and with respect to the probabilities of its future
behavior (“what will the population probably do?"). Hence, there
developed a whole series of systems of knowledge (savoirs) centering
on the criminal, his life, species and society (Foucault 1974, p. 622,
1978a, p. 163). Among these, statistics gained prominence, for it could
establish the general truths of the population based on principles and
regularities intrinsic to a society of living beings and beyond the legal-
political framework of sovereignty (Foucault 1978a, pp. 96, 99-100).
Risk and Social Control
While Foucault's perspective of governmentality has rarely been
applied in studies of law and social control, the concept of risk, which152 MATHIEU DEFLEM
bears definite affinities with Foucault's approach, has been brought
center stage in recent analyses of preventive and predictive
surveillance strategies. Relying on a growing body of theoretical
‘writings in sociology (Beck 1992; Giddens 1990), risk is defined as
‘a mode of decision making based on the knowledge of the possibility
of future dangers, the negative effects of which are to be avoided.
‘As positive decisions over negative possibilities, risk analyses provide
certain information over an uncertain future, And assessments of the
probability of a danger also imply an attempt to avoid the negative
effects of dangers: risk assessment always implies risk management
(without eliminating thé dangers).
‘The logic of risk shares with Foucault's notion of governmentality
that it brings out control strategies that are technical, efficient, and
politically neutral, designed to render crimes impossible or at least
without disturbing consequences (Castel 1991). Corresponding to
Foucault's provocative formula of the beheading of the “King” in
Political affairs (Foucault 1975a, p. 26, 1975, p. 60, 1977a, p. 98,
1977b, p. 121, 1984a, p. 338), strategies of risk “make up” people
(Hacking 1986), not as legal-political subjects, but as statistical
parameters in an equation based on objective knowledge of past and
present conditions. The implication of a collectivity of people and
things enables controls as a “productive network which runs through
the whole social body” (Foucault 19776, p. 119). In line with this
orientation, prediction and prevention are witnessed to embrace new
strategies of control.
Research on preventive and predictive surveillance strategies has
uncovered important dimensions of risk-based or governmental
control. With respect to predictive or actuarial control, Jonathan
Simon and Maleolm Feeley (Feeley and Simon 1992; Simon 1988),
have suggested a shift in law and criminal policy away from a concern
with normativity and individual treatment toward an emphasis on
technicality and classificatory management. Relying on statistical
knowledge of the distribution of variables in a population, actuarial
control aims to predict the behavior of categories of people and
situates individuals as members of those categories. Patrick O'Malley
and Nancy Reichman have similarly related the notion of risk to
preventive surveillance techniques. O”Malley (1992) argues that crime
prevention does not focus on certain individuals and their actions
but instead on the spatial and temporal opportunity structures of
crime, Similarly, Reichman (1986) develops an insurance model of
Surveillance and Criminal Statistics 153
crime control to indicate the growing reliance on opportunity
reduction and loss prevention,
In recent years, several scholars have pointed out similar
transformations of social control, such as the state’s co-optation of
informal forms of control (Cohen 1985; Darian-Smith 1993), the
extension of police practices throughout society (Websdale 1991), the
technocratization of law in terms of efficiency (Heydebrand and
Seron 1990), and the commodification and international marketiza-
tion of crime control and corrections (Ewick 1993; Lilly and Deflem
1996), These discussions have provided important insights into the
relevance of risk and governmentality in contemporary forms of
social control, but they have generally paid little attention to the
historical antecedents of the discussed surveillance strategies. Stanley
Cohen (1985, pp. 147-149), for instance, argues that many
contemporary surveillance practices dispense with the question of
motive in favor of opportunity reduction and crime prevention.
Cohen also suggests, but does not empirically investigate, that this
form of control is not new, but a renaissance. Likewise, Feeley and
Simon (1992, pp. 453, 459) argue that crime statistics and a reliance
‘on quantification in criminal policy have a long history, but they
focus their analysis on contemporary practices. This paper's goal is
todemonstrate that criminal statistics represents one of the important
roots of contemporary practices of governmentality. In other words,
using Foucault's perspective, I will seck to bring out precisely those
aspects of criminal statistics that are relevant from, and are revealed
by, the theory of governmentality.
From a more historically informed perspective, Foucault’s concept
of governmentality (and power, in general) has mainly been discussed
in terms of its conception of the relationship between subject and
power. It has been argued, most forcefully by Jurgen Habermas
(1985, pp. 279-300), that the Foucauldian concept of power cannot
account for the conflictual and ambiguous evolution of disciplinary
surveillance and normative law. Foucault, itis stated, placed so much
emphasis on the intricacies of the technologies of control that he
neglected near to completely developments concerning the legality
and normativity of rights. Instigating a debate about the work of
Foucault along these lines is surely acceptable, but such criticisms
(and their rebuttals) appear to have led to an overindulgence with
‘metahistorical and theoretical controversies largely at the expense of
historical investigations of issues discussed in Foucault's work. Of134 MATHIEU DEFLEM
course, this is not to deny the centrality of history in Foucault's work
and the influence of Foucault’s writings, including his perspective of
‘governmentality, on historically oriented scholarship (e.g., Rose and
Miller 1992; and contributions in Barry, Osborne and Rose 1996).
But redressing the somewhat one-sidedly theoretical reception of
Foucault's work, this paper seeks to contribute to the sociologically
relevant use of some of Foucault's ideas.
‘My investigation of criminal statistics in the following sections
presents an historical inquiry of issues raised by Foucault's
perspective of governmentality, rather than a straightforward
attempt to test propositions Foucault advanced. This paper is not
the first to address the role of statistics in the transformation of power
(cg,, Hacking 1990, 1991; Porter 1986; Stigler 1986), nor the first
to study the history of criminal statistics (e.g., Reinke 1986). But my
analysis presents a more targeted approach in that I will trace certain
problematic traits of criminal statistics which precisely the perspective
of governmentality can elucidate. I will not, then, seek to explain all
matters pertinent to the study of criminal statistics (in fact, I
acknowledge the limitations), but I do wish to show the historical
relevance and applicability of an aspect of Foucault's work. My
intention, moreover, is not to corroborate or falsify Foucault's
theoretical approach, but to elucidate its value and limitations. Thus,
I thematically explore the evolution of criminal statistics in Germany
and the United States as a manifestation of the governmental
emphasis on predictive and preventive control strategies. From a
theoretical viewpoint, this analysis will enable reflections on the
relationship between subject and power, which in terms of the scope
of this paper concerns a confrontation of the technologies of criminal
statistics with its legal, political and normative contexts.
CRIMINAL STATISTICS: THE STATE AND
SOCIETY OF CRIME
te the development of criminal statistics in the (wo
selected nations, a few words are in order on the history of statisties
Foregoing a detailed presentation, I will indicate some historical roots
cof criminal statistics to bring out its distinct qualities as an instrument
of state power and surveillance (see, generally, Hacking 1990, 1991;
Walker 1929; Westergaard 1932)
Surveillance and Criminal Statistics 155
‘The Curiosities of the State: A Note on the History of Statistics
Statistics, as it developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, referred to the science of the state, that is, the descriptive
study of the “curiosities of the state” (Staarsmerckwtirdigkeiten). The
German scholar Gottfried Achenwall invented the term “Statistik”
in a 1749 publication on the European empires. Achenwall’s term
referred to the verbal, non-quantitative descriptive study of states,
and as such statistics became an important domain of study in
political theory. The crucial finding of the investigations in this
tradition was that social phenomena were characterized by a
remarkable regularity over time, There was a tendency to have more
and more of these descriptions presented in the form of numbers.
The elaboration of “table-statistics” (Tabellenstatistik), which
emphasized the enumeration, computation and quantification of
state curiosities, originally met with resistance but could ultimately
not be halted. Additionally, with the rise of the modern state, statistics
became also more purposeful, redirected to solve problems of
government,
By the middle of the nineteenth century, mathematical theories of
probability were introduced in descriptive statistics (Hacking 1990).
Mathematicians had discovered the normal curve and the regression
towards the mean, and the applicability of these findings for the study
of social and political phenomena was soon recognized. But the
joining of mathematical statistics with the study of society was not
evident. After all, the founding father of sociology, Auguste Comte
(1839), despised statistics because it was based on probability calculus
and not on the laws of thought. Why, then, the success of statistics?
‘The Regularity of Crime: The Rise of Criminal Statistics
It was in criminal statistics that the conjunction of the statistical
theory of mathematics and the descriptive practice of the state-
sciences was first achieved. The role of the Belgian astronomer
Adolphe Quetelet is crucial in this respect (Beirne 1987; Lotcin 1912;
‘Wassermann 1927). Quetelet was the first to measure the influences
of such factors as age, sex, education, climate, and season on crime,
a topic he had first lectured on in 1828. By 1832, Quetelet reached
the following conclusion: “We might enumerate in advance how
many individuals will stain their hands in the blood of their fellows,156 (MATHIEU DEFLEM
how many will be forgers, how many will be poisoners... There is
a budget which is paid with greater regularity than that of any finance
minister—it is the budget of the prison, the galleys, and the scaffold”
(cited in Walker 1929, pp. 40-41, Mayo-Smith 1895, p. 263). In 1835,
with the publication of On Man and the Development of His
Faculties, or Essay in Social Physics, Quetelet formulated the theory
of the average man (I/homme moyen). The theory held that all social
(and natural) phenomena showed a remarkable regularity from year
to year. These findings, Quetelet thought, implied that human affairs
obey toanormal curve much like the curve of the probability of errors
mathematicians had dtductively discovered. This normal curve, he
argued, was the result of innumerable little causes which applied to
‘each individual in different ways, while in their totality they followed
a law of their own, Thus, Quetelet’s normal curve at once
individualized and totalized: common causes applied to all, while
‘occasional causes variably applied to each.
In the following sections, I will analyze the rationalities and
strategies of criminal statistics in Germany and the United States.
While my analysis is restricted to these countries, it can be noted that
similar developments took place in many other states (Koren 1918).
Particularly noteworthy are the histories of statistics and criminal
statistics in England and Wales (Gatrell and Hadden 1972), France
(Woolf 1984), and Italy (Patriarca 1994), In fact, statistics itself was
instrumental in its dissemination beyond national borders. For
whereas statistics developed in intimate connection with nation-
building, including the forging of imperial dominion (Anderson 1991,
Pp. 164-170), its principles, course and outcome were not confined
to individual nation-states (Yvernés 1899). This internationalization
corresponded to the nineteenth-century positivist notion that crime
knew no boundaries (because it was a matter of society and not of
Taw) and that therefore criminology should know no boundaries
either. This perspective was influential among European and
American scholars alike. At its Chicago meeting in 1909 the
American Institute of Criminal Law passed the resolution that
“criminology in foreign languages [must] be made readily accessible
in the English language” because “criminal science is a larger thing
than criminal law" (cited in Aschaffenburg 1913, p.v), This functional,
concept of criminal statistics tied in with the positivist perspective
of crime which located the causes of crime in a society of living beings,
not in criminal law (Foucault 1978, 1981a; Garland 1985, pp. 121-
Surveillance and Criminal Statistics 157
125; Pasquino 1991; Pires 1991, pp. 79-84). Crimes, it was argued,
were committed by a specific kind of species being, the homo
criminalis (the criminal person). Earlier, in the classical school, the
criminal had been defined as a person who breaks a law, that is, a
‘homo penalis (penal subject), who was conceived in terms of the result
of the criminal act (a law was broken). With the invention of the
‘homo criminalis, however, not law but society was threatened, not
by crime as a violation of rules but by the species of the dangerous
criminal (Foucault 1974, p. 593, 1978g). The lives of delinquents
therefore became the object of systems of positive knowledge, and
society, defined outside and beyond law (and its national borde:s),
became the new founding principle of criminology (Foucault 1975a,
pp. 247-248, 251-255, 304).
Criminal statisticians also followed the call to create @ functional
global order. The International Statistical Institute was founded in
1853 and, between that year and 1897, it held conferences in Brussels,
Paris, Vienna, Florence, The Hague, St. Petersburg, Budapest, and
Chicago. In 1853 Quetelet proposed at the Brussels meeting of the
Institute that a census of the world should be undertaken, a proposal
which later found resonance among American statisticians (Craigie
1897; Dynes 1899; Falkner 1895). By 1914, the American statistician
S. North was convinced that “[t]he language which Statisties employs
is a universal language... Thus the science of Statistics in the large
sense is the greatest of all the sciences... through this young science
of ours the whole world is akin” (North 1914, pp. 48-49).
STATISTICS AND CRIMINAL STATISTICS IN THE
UNIFICATION OF GERMANY
The case of German criminal statistics presents an interesting field
of investigation, not in the least because of Germany's critical political
transformations and federal structure of government. Germany,
‘moreover, was (with France and England) home to some of the most
influential theories of statistics and criminal science,
‘The Science of German Statistics and Criminal Statistics
Since the late eighteenth century, statistics was taught at many
German universities, instigating a wealth of independently organized158 MATHIEU DEFLEM
‘statistical inquiries in the German territories, Statistical investigations
‘were originally undertaken by individual scholars in search for the
‘Jaws of social events. But soon statistics acquired a more purposeful
orientation, intended to solve problems of policy and crime control
(Tonnies 1925).
Among the hundreds of German works in criminal statistics
published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the writings of
Georg von Mayr are particularly significant. In the first volume of his
‘Stauistik und Gesellschafislehre (1895), von Mayr defined the scope of
‘moral statistics as the study “of the circumstances and appearances of
ethical life... whose mfass-observation is accessible in number and
‘measurement” (cited in Tonnies 1925, p. 122). Moral statisti included
the study of suicide, divorce, crime, and ethical aspects of other
phenomena of life and society, such as the legality and illegality of birth,
the ethical commitments of the population as measured by church
statistics, the obedience to political rule as reflected in electoral results,
and the moral qualities of people as indicated by alcoho! consumption
(Lexis 1910). The quantitative state-sciences were considered relevant
for the study as well as the management of “ethical circumstances.”
Von Mayr (1914) defined the purpose of these inquiries explicitly in
terms of their relevance for the administration of society (statistics as
Verwaltungsstatistik, administrative statistics)
‘The Organization of German Statistics, 1800-1914
‘To sustain the ambitious project of the German science of statistics,
‘a massive machinery for the collection of statistics developed in the
German territories (Warzburger 1918). Statistical inquiries were
originally organized in statistical-topographical bureaus in the
sovereign German principalities since the early 1800s (in Prussia in
1805, in Bavaria in 1808, and in Wirttemberg in 1820). The first
unification of these statistical bureaus was achieved with the Tariff
Union (Zotlverein) of 1834, and expanded after the formation of the
German Empire (Deutsches Reich) in 1871 when an Imperial plan
was developed to organize statistical collections for all of united
Germany. German Imperial statistics included central, federal,
special and community statistics. Central statistics applied to the
entire Empire, federal statistics concerned the member-states but
were transmitted to the Empire, special statistics pertained only to
the different states, and community statistics were organized in cities.
Suneillance and Criminal Statistics 159
Central and federal statistics were collected and/or administered
by the Imperial Statistics Office established on 21 July 1872.
‘Supported by a large number of personnel (some 1,500 by the early
1900s), the reports of the Office were made widely available,
horizontally across the territory of the Empire anc vertically from
the top to the bottom of the administration. Special statistics relied
‘on the statistical offices of different German lands, and community
statistics on municipal offices (by 1914, there were 17 state offices
and 45 municipal offices in the German Empire).
‘The management of these statistical collections was not regulated
by law but decided upon in the statistical offices. Operated by
Professional statisticians, these offices collected information
regardless of the specific needs of the political and legal
administration, This was seen as an important advantage. Statistical
material was considered to benefit the public administration precisely
because the topics of information were not determined beforehand:
“this indefiniteness makes it possible that needs which could not have
been predicated in advance may lead to a thorough utilization of the
results” (Wilrzburger 1918, p. 347). Consequently, an enormous
amount and variety of information was collected and printed, ranging
from data on import and export, demographics and occupations, to
deaths, crimes and suicides,
The collection of criminal statistics, finally, was first organized in
each German land and uniformed for the Empire after 1882 (Roesner
1942). German criminal statistics included prison and judicial
statistics. Prison statistics concerned only convicts, while judicial
statistics reported on the activities of the courts (personnel, facilities)
and, starting in 1882, all penal offences for which sentence was passed.
Judicial statistics were centrally organized from. 1881 onwards under
the supervision of the Imperial Department of Justice. The courts
were instructed to fill in a card for every verdict it had reached,
specifying sex, age, place of residence, religion, family situation,
‘occupation, category of crime, place and time of crime, and type of
sentence. These cards were collected by the Imperial Statistical Office
and the information was published in the “Statistics of the German
Empire” (Statistik des Deutschen Reichs) and, after 1900, separately
in the “Criminal Statistics of the German Empire” (Kriminalstatistik
des Deutschen Reichs).160 MATHIEU DEFLEM
German Criminal Statistics and Criminal Policy
With respect to the practical value of criminal statistics for
surveillance, the large quantity of crime data gathered by the German
Statistical offices was considered of central importance. More
information and more accurate information were judged indispen-
sable to control the criminal species. The obsession with counting
crimes, criminals and their various correlates is striking. For instance,
one work of the criminologist Aschaffenburg (1913), based on the
“Statistics of the German Empire,” reveals, among numerous other
things, the number of convictions in Germany between 1882 and 1893
per 100,000 of the population, broken down for women and men,
per category of crime, in proportion to the total population for
different offences such as perjury, resisting officers and indecent
assaults on children, in proportion to the number of inmates of
legitimate birth, and in terms of the days when assaults were
committed
As to the technical difficulties German criminal statisticians
encountered, the issues of comparability and uniformity of collection
‘methods were most discussed (von Scheel 1910; Reich 1885; Reimann
1931; Roesner 1930). While insights were gained on the direction,
strength and changing rate of crimes, it was acknowledged that the
collection methods, within Germany and in comparisan to other
countries, differed with respect to the utilized categories of crime and
the factors measured in relation to crime, German criminologists also
pointed out problems because of a lack of theoretical substance.
Aschaffenburg (1913, pp. 7-12) and Tonnies (1925), for instance,
complained that crime data were not disaggregated per individual
case and that the classifications were still too much determined by
the principles of criminal law and not by criminology as a science
of society
With respect to the influence of German criminal statistics on
police operations, no far-reaching conclusions can be made, The
value of statistics for the internal administration of society,
specifically for police and taxation, was recognized and promoted
early on in the development of statistics (Hoffmann 1845), But as
criminologist Cyrille Fijnaut (1990) points out, no research has
explicitly devoted attention to uncovering the influences of
criminology and criminal statistics on police practices. And although
Surveillance and Criminal Statistics 161
theoretical principles of criminological and statistical knowledge were
reflected in practically oriented police manuals, such handbooks of
proper policing often did not dictate actual criminal investigations
and daily police work (Litdtke 1984). However, the German system
of the “Meldewesen” offers an instance where statistical knowledge
of the population, of all and of each, was effectively used.
After the formation of the German Empire in 1871, the function
of police in Germany was (as centuries before) very broadly
understood to concern such diverse matters as murder, health,
hairstyles, smoking in public places, and religion (Fosdick 1915). In
the early twentieth century, the Berlin police, for example, was
functionally specialized in separate divisions for mining, water, fields
and forests, cattle-discases, hunting, fisheries, trade, fire, and roads.
The tasks of the Berlin police included, amongst a host of other
things, the supervision of market places, examinations of the quality
of food, the inspection of lodging houses, and the supervision of
ruggists and other professions. In the period before World War I,
the Berlin police issued ordinances regulating the color of
automobiles, the length of hatpins, and the appropriate methods of
purchasing fish and fowl. In Stuttgart it was by police ordinance
forbidden to fall asleep in a restaurant, while children were not
allowed to slide om a slippery side-walk,
This broad concept of policing could rely on a governmental
practice known as the Registration System (Meldewesen) specified
inthe “Law of Freedom of Movement” of November |, 1867 (Fosdick
1915, pp. 350-361). This law stipulated that all inhabitants, German
and foreign, had to report thei coming and going from, to and within
@ town to the police. In the early 1900s, this system required the
authorities of the city of Berlin to employ 200 people to manage
information, collected in 130 rooms, on 12 million former and present
Berlin residents. The Meldewesen system was used for different
purposes, for instance to make up lists of children who were to be
vaccinated under the compulsory vaccination laws, to identify men
between the ages of 20 and 45 who had not served in the military,
or to furnish post offices with missing addresses. Relying on
‘Meldewesen information, the detective squads of the police of
different German cities published weekly magazines
(Fahndungsblatt, search paper) with descriptions and names of
wanted criminals. This information was taken up in similar systems
of other cities, so that information on criminal suspects could be162 (MATHIEU DEFLEM
transmitted from one German city to another. Efforts were also made
to include criminals wanted in other European countries. The police
of Frankfurt, for example, published English, German and French
versions of the “International Criminal Record,” a search paper
containing information on the whereabouts of criminals reported by
various police forces in Europe. The generality of the system allowed
the apprehension of individual suspects. German police squads would
raid hotels, lodging houses and public places, and check apprehended
persons with information collected in the registration system.
CRIME STATISTICS AND CRIMINAL STATISTICS
IN THE UNITED STATES
Whereas in the case of Germany a pattern can be observed from the
science of criminal statistics to the practice of the collection of crime
statistics, the history of American criminal statistics in this respect
represents a reverse picture. In the United States, a country with
strong pragmatist traditions, crime statistics were first collected and
later they acquired their scientifically substantiated purpose as a tool
of surveillance,
‘The Organization of U.S. Crime Statistics, 1800-1933
Closely selated to the structure of U.S. government, the collection
of crime statistics in nineteenth-century America was a matter of the
individual state governments and the federal government. In the first
half of the nineteenth century, the individual U.S. states already
began organizing the collection of crime statistics (Robinson 19114;
Gettemy 1919). Whereas federal crime statistics comprised only
prison statistics until the 1930s, crime statistics ofthe states included
judicial, police and prison statistics. Court or judicial statistics
concerned people brought before court, police statisties included
crimes reported to the police, and prison statistics applied to convicts.
By 1892, the “great lack of uniformity” was already noted as the
major problem of state crime statistics (Pettigrove 1892, p. 4; see
Falkner 1892). This lack of uniformity was increased by the fact that
different kinds of crime statistics were collected. Some states gathered
court statistics as well as prison statistics, which were compiled by
sheriffs and keepers of prisons who sent their material to the secretary
Suneillance and Criminal Statisties 163,
of state or to state boards of charities and corrections. By 1933, some
twenty-two U.S. states were collecting crime statistics, but mostly
these data were criticized for being inaccurate and incomplete. As
an overall picture of the crime rate in any one state, the situation
‘was complicated by the fact that several organizations collected crime
statistics without much coordination between them.
Federal crime statistics were first collected in the census of 1850
and continued in 1860 and 1870, when the assistants of U.S. marshalls
{at that time the official census takers) collected information on
people who were imprisoned (Robinson 191la, 1920; Cummings
1918). In 1880 it was proposed that special census officers would be
appointed to collect information on pauperism and crime, specifically
on prisoners—a plan which was carried out during the 1890 census,
Since 1907 the Bureau of the Census organized the collection of
prison statistics, and after 1926 the Children’s Bureau collected
juvenile court statistics in collaboration with the National Probation
‘Association. In addition, the Federal Bureau of Prisons published
statistics of federal prisoners since 1928.
Considering the multitude of institutions which collected crime
statistics, the situation was soon recognized as intolerable (Robinson
1930; Warner 1923a, 1929). An initiative of the International
Association of Chiefs of Police in the late 1920s was to bring about
change with respect to the lack of uniformity in U.S. crime statistics
(Committee on Uniform Crime Records 1929). The Association
formed the Committee on Uniform Crime Records and developed
a Uniform Classification of Offenses. U.S. Congress authorized the
National Division of Identification and Information of the
Department of Justice to collect and organize police statistics as
recommended by the Association in 1930. By 1933, three divisions
of the federal government were involved with the collection of erime
statistics: the Bureau of the Census (for prison statistics), the Bureau
of Investigation of the Justice Department (for police statistics), and
the Children’s Bureau of the Department of Labor (for juvenile crime
statistics).
The Rationality of American Criminal Statistics,
Inquiring into the reasons of why crime statistics were collected
and the functions for which they were intended, itis striking to note
‘that most American criminal statisticians did not discuss the matteret MATHIEU DEFLEM
at all. But precisely this silence indicates the rationale of U.S. criminal
statistics. The American statistician Roland Falkner (1889), who in
1888 was assigned by the American Statistical Association to count
the number of prisoners in the United States, indeed suggested the
following, deceptively simple reason for reporting his findings in a
specific way: “the effort has been made to arrange the material in
such a way as to obtain the most numerous results possible” (Falknet
1889, p. 381, my emphasis).
Positivist criminology since the nineteenth century focused on the
criminal species as a Population of Jiviag people which had to be
studied. And this is che key issue of crirainal statisties in the United
States: the society of criminals had to be known. As one scholar
observed with respect to the collection of crime statistics: “The
layman and skeptic will naturally ask, ‘What is to be obtained from
all this complicated and extensive machinery?” The answer is obvious.
Icwill make available some accurate and truthful information both
about crime and criminals, instead of the wild guesses so common
and popular today”(Rubinow 1926, p. 142), In other words, however
crime and its control were to be conceived, it was clear that the types
of crime, the number of crimes, and the fluctuations from year to
year had to be uncovered. Criminal statisties were meant to expose
the nature and extent of crime, and because “Iclrime prevention is
not confined to criminal law and its administrators” (Sellin 1934, p.
383}, this was conceived as “a problem, not of legislation, but of
executive service” (Cummings 1918, p. 689).
This preoccupation with the knowledge of crime is indicated by
the problems which American criminal statisticians mentioned with
respect to the collection of crime statistics. Almost aif writings in
American criminal statistics discussed this matter: the existing
statistics were considered inadequate because they were incomplete,
that is, because they did not present a full picture of the entire crime
problem. More specifically, for instance, the statisticians Morrison
(1897), Falkner (1892) and Robinson (1911) discussed the fact that
the census only counted the nutnber of prisoners at a given moment
and that no accurate indices were available of the extent and
Shuctwations of crime. Court statistics, it was argued, only measured
the number of defendants in court, often without “a few simple facts
about the defendant, such as ex, age, and marital condition"(Warer
1934, p. 75). And prison statistics only included prisoners, while
police statistics were unclear on the definition of erime (Warner (934,
Surveillance and Criminal Statistics 165
. S6ff). Related to these problems, pleas were made for collaboration
between the different collecting institutions, for the establishment of
uniform classification systems, and for the integration of police,
judicial and prison statisties (Robinson 191 a)
The fact that criminal statistics in the United States was discussed
from this perspective can be attributed to two factors: the influences
sinee the nineteenth century of European criminal statistics, and the
‘growing American concern over professional crime in the 1920s and
1930s, The influence of European criminal statistics on the collection
of U.S. crime statistics dates back to the 1830s. According to the
criminal statistician Robinson (1911a, p. 39), the early work of the
USS. states was directly influenced by the writings of European
statisticians. Indeed, when in 1838 the Secretary of the state of New
York published crime statistics collected between 1830 and 1837, he
regularly referred to foreign statisticians, specifically to Quetelet
(Robinson 1911, p. 47), “The connection, therefore, between the
beginnings of criminal statistics on the continent of Europe and in
this country is close,” Robinson (1920, p. 157) concluded. The
collecting of crime statistics in the United States was indeed
particularly expanded in the 1830s, the same years in which most
Progress was made in Europe. Moreover, the problems discussed in
‘American criminal statistics are remarkably similar to those debated
in the European tradition, Above all, the obsession with obtaining
information about crime is striking,
‘The close ties between European and American criminal statistics
led to the curious situation that statistics on crime in Europe were
readily available in America, At its meeting in St. Louis in 1871, the
International Association of Chiefs of Police, for instance, discussed
crime statistics of France, Austria-Hungary, Sweden, Holland,
Denmark and Turkey, but not of the U.S. states. In the early
twentieth century, the American statistician Robinson (1911a)
derived most of hiz research material from German and French
statistics. In 1907 the statistician Shipley (1907) published homicide
rates of Austria-Hungary in an American journal, and in 1929 the
sociologist Thorsten Sellin discussed crime statistics from nine
European countries (Sellin 1929),
The concern with uniform crime statistics was also influenced by
the changing perception of the American crime problem. Specifically
in the {920s and 1930s crime became conceived as a phenomenon
typical for America’s urban areas. The concerns over the166 MATHIEU DEFLEM
professionalization of crime and the perception that the crime rate
‘was on the rise heightened the debate over accurate crime statistics,
as indicated by the explosion of criminal statistics research and the
development of uniform crime reports in that period (Davies 1931;
Fuller 1931; Bettman, Jamison, Marshall, and Miles 1932; Sanders
1937; Marshall 1932b). The elaboration of criminal statistics in
‘America, in turn, put statisticians and criminologists in Germany in
the position to find out more about the American crime problem and
‘American police experiences. Already in the early 1900s, German
criminologists discussed American prison and crime statistics
(Fehlinger 1908; Spitzka 1903). By the late 1920s and carly 1930s,
German criminology and police journals published reports on,
among other things, American statisties of prisoners and lynchings
(Die Polizei 1933; Heindl 1927, 1933; Raper 1932), crime statistics
in selected American cities (Archiv fiir Kriminologie 1929), and the
unification of U.S. criminal statisties (Archiv fiir Kriminologie 1928;
Bartels 1933).
‘American Criminal Statistics and Penal Policy
‘The development of American criminal statistics was inspired by
the idea that crime had to be known. But what was to be done with
this knowledge? On this issue the general consensus among American
criminal statisticians was that more knowledge (and only more
knowledge) of the crime problem could lead to an efficient
administration of criminal justice. Occasionally, this led to
straightforward denunciations of the criminal justice system.
Pettigrove, for instance, argued in 1892 that “when you seck the
primal cause of our rapidly filling prisons, you will find it in the
absurdities of the statutes, and in the carelessness of the courts”
(Pettigrove 1892, p. 14), But most criticisms were directed at
interventions in, rather than straightforward condemnations of, the
administration of criminal justice, The Committee on Uniform Crime
Records (1929), for example, stated that accurate crime statistics had
to be collected because “[llack of such essential data has made
scientific police management extremely difficult” and because “{tlhe
ever-increasing attention devoted by the daily and periodical press
to crime topics has resulted in an ill-defined yet wide-spread feeling
of uncertainty in 2 belief that one is not secure in his life and his
‘goods, that police have failed in their task of protection, and that
Surveillance and Criminal Statistics 167
all forms of crime are steadily mounting” (pp. 16, 17). Similarly,
Rubinow (1926) urged for the collection of “accurate and truthful
information” (p. 142), and Sellin (1931) argued that “a crime index
is necessary in order that the effects of deliberative policies of social
reform, particularly in the field of crime treatment or prevention, may
be gauged” (p, 336).
_ Accurate crime statistics, then, were thought to be the most
important basis for « reform of the administration of criminal justice
(Warmer 1931, 1932, 1934). The value of crime statistics for police
was undisputed: “lulp-to-date police departments use statistics
extensively; for example, statistics of the time of day or night when
different crimes are committed, and of the occasion within the city,
are made the basis for assigning the man-power of the police force”
(Warner 1934, p, 50). The courts, too, had to acquire “the efficiency
of modern business” (p. 50) because “{wlithout the aid of statistics,
Judges are often not aware how they themselves customarily act,
‘much less what their colleagues do” (p. 51). As Sellin (1934) argued,
‘more data had to become available “for our estimate of what Quetelet
‘once called the annual ‘national crime budget” in order to “(tell us
where the danger spots are located” and to develop a proper
‘organization of criminal justice that can “catch up with the procession
which France started in 1825 and England joined in 1856” (pp. 381,
382, 387).
Detailed investigations are needed to assess the extent and manner
in which criminal statistics were actually applied in American legal
and surveillance practices. However, beyond the development of the
well-known Uniform Crime Report, an interesting application of
‘American criminal statistics ean be found in the conception of the
predictive system of parole. In the 1920s and 1930s, there were
attempts to reform parole in the United States on the basis of
assessments of the likelihood of a successful parole (as could be
predicted using statistical data on former parolees). The literature on
the development of parole as.a predictive strategy in the United States
is extremely extensive, including discussions of scientific methods for
parole decisions (c.g, Burgess 1936; Lanne 1935; Murphy 1934;
Sutherland and van Vechten 1934; Tibbits 1931, 1932; Vold 1931)
and analyses of parole systems developed on the basis of such
methods (Warner 1923b; Hart 1923; Laune 1936). The rationale of
these parole decisions was inspired by predictive techniques in the
following way. The characteristics of a candidate for parole were168 MATHIEU DEFLEM
measured (¢.g,, age, sex, color) and a decision was made based on
statistical information of the success or failure of former parolees with
similar characteristics. A parole candidate was considered more or
less likely to commit a crime because of his/her belonging to a more
‘or less probable repeat-criminal class. Reaching a parole decision in
this way, it was suggested, officials would be “interested primarily
in doing what is best for society, and in what is best for the individual
only to the extent that the interests of the individual and those of
society coincide” (Laune 1936, p. 2).
The system of predictive parole was not widely adopted in the
United States until the 1970s (Simon 1993, p. 172), but the procedure
‘was on an experimental basis introduced in some U.S. prison settings
as early as the 1930s. For example, in 1932 the Illinois Department
of Public Welfare introduced a predictive parole system at the Joliet
Penitentiary (Laune 1936). Parole decisions were reached taking into
account a variety of variables, including time served, age, nationality,
marital status, neighborhood and IQ, on the basis of such questions
as: “Has your father ever served time in prison?; Do you milk a cow
from the right or from the left side?; Do you feel at home in the city?;
Do you regularly wear colored underwear?; Do you like to see two
people fight?”
CRIMINAL STATISTICS AS
GOVERNMENTAL TECHNOLOGY
The here presented histories of criminal statistics indicate that there
developed in Germany and in the United States, as in other
industrialized nations, a system of governmental control based on the
quantification of crime and criminals. The relevance of these
developments is brought out when criminal statistics is related to the
characteristics of risk-based and governmental power as proposed by
Foucault and applied in the contemporary literature on social control.
The Rationality of Criminal Statistics:
A Classification of Characteristics
Criminal Statistics and Risk
‘The science and practice of criminal statistics in several respects
betrays similarities with the rationality of risk. Above all, criminal
Surveillance and Criminal Statistics 169
statistics was a descriptive enterprise which sought to collect, classify,
and assess the probabilities of crimes for classes of people and social
and physical environments. Criminal statistics was essentially
description with a purpose: as risk assessment it collected
information, and as risk management it predicted the crimes to be
expected and prevented. Thus, the transformation of crime from
anger to risk was a ctucial component of criminal statistics. Dangers
hhave causes that need to be tackled and ultimately removed, But risks
do not call for elimination; they need to be managed.
For the scientifically minded criminologists of the nineteenth
century, those were precisely the reasons why the causes and not just
the correlates of crime had to be uncovered (Oberschall 1965, pp.
45-51), Ferdinand Tonnies and Emile Durkheim, for instance, both
suggested the sociological root causes of crime and therefore they
clearly separated between the descriptive and explanatory aspects of
criminological sociology, Tonnies (1925) differentiated between the
science and the method of statistics, while Durkheim (1900) proposed
to distinguish criminal sociology as science from moral statistics as
method. And, indeed, the application of statistics in the social sciences
followed its own course of development (Camic and Xie 1994;
Desrosiéres 1988; Porter 1985). Similarly, it should be noted that the
history of criminology is not only a history of power and control
(although it is always that too) but also of a knowledge which can
be critical—not rarely in Foucauldian terms—of modern surveillance
and the power to punish (Garland 1992), But for criminal
statisticians, the intentionality of counted rumbers for power and
control, and its concept of crime as risk, entailed important
advantages. As risks the probabilities of crime could be attributed
to classes of criminals (the young, the colored, the poor) and
predictions could be made for all and for each. The associational
factors of crime could not be changed, but the likelihood of crime
could be predicted and its occurrence or negative effects prevented.
The Governmental Rationality of Criminal Statistics
As Foucault suggested with respect to governmental power,
criminal statistics led to conceive and develop totalizing and at once
individualizing strategies of surveillance. It was endeavored by
criminal statistics to count each and all, not as individuals, but as
members belonging to classes. Moreover, criminal statistics was not170 MATHIEU DEFLEM
just a science of descriptions but also a purposeful practice intended
to be useful for crime control and the administration of justice. The
target of criminal statistics (the criminal species) was uncovered by
means of general but minute representations, and, in a general
calculating mode, its ultimate goal was prevention and prediction,
‘The purposefulness of criminal statistics was imbedded in the practice
from the start. As President Brougham stated at the London
conference of the International Statistical Institute in 1860, “criminal
statistics are for the legislator what the chart and the compass are
for the navigator” (cited in Ferri 1900, p. 52). Of course, this statement
‘was more wish than reality, especially in the case of the United States.
For, indeed, although there are critical connections and even parallel
developments between the histories of criminal statistics in Germany
and the United States, there are differences too, even in terms of
technology. In the United States, in particular, harmonization of
criminal statistics not only meant technical improvement but also
entailed a clash between various, national and local, levels of
government. Thus the move towards more accurate statistics also
comprised a fight over authority and control. But once technical
“ifficulties of uniform crime collection had been mastered on both
sides of the Atlantic, criminal statistics did in effect become influential
for crime control, as exemplified by such diverse applications in such
varied settings as the Meidewesen system in Germany and the
development of predictive parole in the United States. Such
technologies reveal not only the definite attempts but also the
realizations, however modest, to transform the legally regulated and
policed nation-state into a statistically administered society.
‘The simultaneously totalizing and individualizing aspects of
criminal statistics were accompanied by changes inthe police function
and criminology, Whereas in the United States the role of the police
was intimately connected with the federal structure of U.S.
government, in Germany the nationalistically sustained unification
of the German nation enabled a return to a very broad concept of
policing. Notwithstanding the many differences between these two
countries in terms of political, legal and cultural developments, in
both cases an efficiently conceived management of crime was directed
at quantities and qualities of spaces and beings, not based on law
as a corpus of rules, but on objective assessments of the criminal
species in society. The science of criminology sought to replace the
sovereignty of law with the truth of society, and criminal statistics
Surveillance and Criminal Statistics im
provided a tool tailored towards the management of a population
of living bodies.
Criminal Statistics and Law
‘Conceived in terms of regularities and probabilities, the rationality
$f risk and governmentality manifested in criminal statistics implies
‘a different concept of society and individual than the one adopted
by a concept of law based on rights. Particularly relevant, in my view,
are the following four characteristics of the relationship between risk-
based criminal statistics and rights-based law.
First, through criminal statistics it was attempted to substitute the
individuality of juridical responsibility with the collectivity of risk
‘Ewald 199ta, pp. 201-205; Feeley and Simon 1992, p. 452). With
criminal statistics each end all were counted because entire classes of
the population as a waole were conceived to be threatened by 2
‘generalized risk of crime. The distinct motives of individual violators
of law were dispensed in favor of average probabilities of segments of
the population. The individualizing totality of crime control based on
criminal statisties also led to a shift of responsibility away from the
individual criminal, not only to an entire class of probable criminals,
but also to aggregates of potential victims. The anticipated actions of
the potential victim could become 2 basis for risk control because
criminal statistics revealed the probability and regularity of crime.
Second, criminal statistics aspired to supplant the justice of law
with an economic efficiency of risk. Particularly since the early
twentieth century, ctisinal statisticians, as experts of the risks of
crime, tried to take over from the judges of right, an endeavor in
which they were at least in part successful. And while surveillance
strategies based on criminal statistics could not exclude or abolish
crime, they could economically distribute the negative effects of crime
‘over the population as a whole.
Third, through criminal statistics it was endeavored to replace the
morality of law with the calculability of risk. Criminal statistics had
established regularities of crime, on the basis of which the probability
of future crimes could be calculated. This calculation did not take
into account the moral will of legal actors, neither judge nor suspect,
but the objective, social and/or natural, correlations of crime.
Fourth, as indicated by the rather limited applicability of criminal
statistics in criminal and penal policy, there remained an important172 MATHIEU DEFLEM
breach between statistical dreams and political-legal realities, In
Germany, criminal statisticians more readily found an ally in the
political-legal system, relying as they could on a long tradition of
broad police powers and autocratic rule, Indicative, most tragically,
isthe ease with which the Nazi regime incorporated existing statistical
structures, procedures and organizations in its ruthless program
(Hughes 1955). In clear contrast, criminal statistics in America was
much slower to develop to the same level of competency, and not
only for reasons of a lack of technical prowess. In terms of the
realization of the aspirations of American criminal statisticians,
Robinson (1920) summarized the problem well: “Most scientists are
Prussians at heart, having as their goal a system of government
wherein they will be fixed as bright and immovable stars. In a
democracy, however, scientists must fight for their position and for
their opinions as vigorously as the veriest ward politicians, and the
sooner they realize this, the sooner will science exercise some
influence in our government” (Robinson 1920, p. 163). That
realization, of course, was never fully attained and criminal statistics
would continue to remain confronted with political and legal realities.
Even the most totalizing of plans for control and surveillance face
resistance; or, in the words of Foucault (1975a, p. 27), power is
‘omnipresent but not omnipotent. The development of criminal
statistics did not entail a transformation towards a totally
administered society but towards a society where total administration
was deemed a possibility as much as a necessity.
Transformations of Social Control:
On the Realization of the “Prussian Dream”
The science and practice of criminal statistics constituted an
important technology of preventive and predictive surveillance which
shares a rationality of risk and governmentality with central currents
in contemporary crime control strategies. I do not suggest that there
is nothing new about contemporary practices of preventive and
predictive control strategies, only that they are not altogether new
and have roots in the nineteenth century. This rather restricted thesis
should not be understood as a presentist argument, that is, as an
analysis of the past through the present, but merely underscores the
value of history, of looking at the present through its past.
Surveillance and Criminal Statistics 173
Additionally qualifying the conclusions of this paper, I
acknowledge that I have in my analysis uncovered only one aspect
of a broader and more ambiguous evolution of !aw and surveillance.
It would be mistaken to hold that the rationality of risk and
governmentality is all that has emerged in strategies of surveillance
developed over the past two centuries. Particularly with the
formation and transformation of the nation-state and the rule of law,
the history of surveillance does rot only entail an increasing
aspiration towards efficiency and technicality but also includes the
development and expansion of social and legal rights. Criminal
statisticians aimed this complex relationship to ultimately entail a
normalization of law (Ewald 1986, 1991b, 1992; Garland 1985, pp.
130-134). As such, this aspiration indeed corresponds to Foucault's
suggestion that while governmental power is “probably irreducible
to the representation of law,” this does not mean that “law fades into
the background... but that the law operates more and more as a
norm” (Foucault 1976a, pp. 89, 144). Indeed, Foucault in his work
explicitly stated, although it is often less acknowledged, that power
and control are of various kinds. Most notably, even with the
development towards disciplinary and governmental control, there
remain relevant to be considered issues of rights and justice (Foucault
1975a, p. 16, 1977b, pp. 148, 155, 1983b, p. 380). Likewise, it should
bbe noted that Foucault never claimed that the state would be
disappearing, but rather that the “reason of the state” (raison d'é1at)
can not be understood in terms ofits self-proclaimed principles (civil
society, territory, rule of law, sovereignty). Instead, the state should
bbe uncovered on the basis of its governmental strategies and
techniques, that is, as a process of the governmentalization of the
state rather than a state appropriation of powers (Foucault 1978b,
pp. 101-102, 1979a, pp. 112-113, 1978a, pp. 103-104).
Nevertheless, as Habermas (1985, p. 340, 1992, p. 452) and others
have pointed out against Foucault, developments in the legal
protection and political appropriation of rights and duties have to
be considered in their own right to sketch a more balanced picture
of the history of modern surveillance. Foucault, too, acknowledged
that there could be no power without resistance (Foucault 1976a, pp.
95-96, 1981a, p. 253, 1982b, p. 213). But, though fixing the attitude
of eritique in the Kantian notion of Enlightenment, he also held that
the question of “how not to be governed” appears “rather as a partner
as well as an adversary of the arts of government” (Foucault 1978f,174 MATHIEU DEFLEM
p. 38), The motives and interests underlying the development and
application of criminal statistics are in fact more complex than
exclusively involving a trend of governmentality, Both in Germany
and in the United States, various agencies, private and public, at
various levels, regional and federal, were involved with the
development of criminal statistics and they all attempted to forward
their own, potentially conflicting agendas. In Germany, it was most
striking that a nationalization of statistics (as of police and law) was
never fully achieved, not even with the formation of a strongly
autocratic regime like the German Empire and not even during Nazi
rule, Instead, local agericies and structures continued to dominate
practices of governmental control rather autonomously. In the case
of the United States, there was not only the clash between different
levels of government, but additionally impeding uniform criminal
statistics was the fact that so many law enforcement agencies were
developing competing systems. Various police systems, moreover,
had their own agendas in developing criminal statistics to further
police professionalization rather than crime control (Walker 1977).
Acknowledging the critique of the occasionally rather sweeping
implications and teleological tenets of Foucault’s notion of
governmentality, the central problem for historical studies of power
and crime control, then, is not so much whether risk-based control
strategies have developed, nor whether modern polities and law have
not dispensed with normative issues, but how and why both
processes, the development of risk-based surveillance and of rights-
based law, occurred together. This issue is not altogether new to the
sociology of law. The discussed tension, generally coined in terms
of aconfrontation between legality and legitimacy, has been discussed
in the works of Weber (1922), Gurvitch (1942), and Fuller (1969).
More recently, it has been suggested that the issue can be approached
in terms of bringing together insignts derived from the work of
Foucault and Habermas, uniting an attention for the potentially
alienating technologies of control with a recognition of the
developments and gains regarding democracy, legal normativity and
rights (Deflem 1994; Simon 1994),
‘But what I hope to have revealed in this paper, is that criminal
statistics was part of a plurality of activities directed at the fertility
of territories and the health and movements of the population
regardless of national culture and political context. The fact that the
sciences of statistics were applied not only to crime, but also to birth,
Suneillance and Criminal Statistics 175
death, commerce, race and migration, to a general calculus of
everything and everybody, testifies to this. While it is beyond the
scope of this paper to assess how these different dimensions of
statistics co-operated and conficted with politics and law, I pointed
ut that the history of control is definitely not only a history of rights
and justice. Still, the duality between surveillance as technicality and
law as justice is what needs to be emphasized. For as much as criminal
statisticians urged for the adoption of a notion of crime conceived
from a non-legalistic perspectite, they also had to regret the fact that
the legal definition and treatment of crime still prevailed and that,
in von Mayr’ terms, the “continuing production” of criminal
statistics was not matched by an equally enthusiastic “consumption”
(von Mayr 1914, p. 409), Thus the “Prussian dream” of criminal
statistics remained in an ambiguous relationship with the reality of
legal rights. In fact, as Feeley and Simon (1992, pp. 451, 459) argue,
although actuarial control practices have recently found much more
fertile ground of application—in part because they can rely on far
more sophisticated statistical techniques than in earlier times—even
today the “new penology” is not a hegemonic strategy of control and
lacks coherence.
CONCLUSION
Ihave in this paper sought to demonstrate that the rationality guiding
contemporary forms of risk-based social control was already
established in the previous century, This does not mean that
contemporary forms of governmental control deserve no detailed
discussion beyond and because of their historical roots in criminal
statistics. On the contrary, whi this paper has uncovered important
parallels and similarities between criminal statistics and contempor-
ary risk-based surveillance, a full assessment of present forms of
control, and of their developmental path from, and differences with,
previous forms (c.g., Feeley and Simon 1992, pp. 460-465), would
bbe needed to reach a more balanced conclusion. Among the
differences between nineteenth century criminal statistics and present
forms of preventive and predictive control, I suggest, the issue of
efficacy may be among the most crucial. While the eighteenth-century
cameralist notion of policing, for instance, presents the ultimate
Orwellian picture of a society policed in all aspects of life, it should176 MATHIEU DEFLEM
bbe noted that this form of surveillance was by and large not effective.
European societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth century were
marked by numerous incidences of crime and they remained largely
tunpoliced. As sociologist Charles Tilly (1994) points out, a history
of the rationality and organization of crime control and police must
also focus on “poticing seen from below” (p. 894), that is, on the actual,
practices of police and contro! in confrontation with popular unrest,
resistance, and violence.
Particularly two contemporary social processes may be crucial for
the realization potentials of tisk-based surveillance: the expansion of
information systems, and the increasing reliance on computerized
technologies. From several theoretical perspectives it has recently
been suggested that modern societies are witnessing an expansion of
constructed social organizations which are based on systems of
specialized knowledge that specify how to act in light of certain risks
(Coleman 1990; Giddens 1990). Ever more organizational designs are
being produced to address the risks created by technologies, and other
technologies are invented to respond to the risks these technologies
in turn pose. Under these circumstances, contemporary forms of risk-
based surveillance, unlike criminal statistics of a century ago, do have
at their disposal the powerful means necessary, and perhaps
sufficient, to fulfill the cameralist ideal. But, importantly, the
increased potentials for the realization of the “Prussian dream” in
western democratic societies coincides with an unprecedented
expansion of legally guaranteed social and individual rights, An
important question is what direction this clash between risk-based
technology and rights-based normativity will take.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Research for this paper was in part supported by a doctoral dissertation
grant from the National Science Foundation (#SBR-9411478). Opinions
and statements do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science
Foundation. An carlicr version was presented at the annual meeting of the
Law and Society Association, Phoenix, June 1994, I thank Gary Marx, Fred
Pampel, Rick Rogers, and Jonathan Simon for helpful suggestions on
previous drafts. Additional thanks go to editor Austin Sarat and to three
‘anonymous reviewers. Translations from the German and French are mine.
Surveillance and Criminal Statistics 7
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