Střed 1/2020 – Call for Papers

Issue topic: Crime and Punishment. The History of Crime, Criminology, and Criminalistics in Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Deadline for submissions:
December 31st, 2019

Contact:
stred@mua.cas.cz

Languages of publication:
Czech, English, German

Journal website:
https://www.mua.cas.cz/en/stred-centre-journal-for-interdisciplinary-studies-of-central-europe-in-the-19th-and-20th-centuries-323

Full content of the journal:
www.ceeol.com

Abstracts:
http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl

Indexing:
ERIH+, SCOPUS, CEEEOL, CEJSH, EBSCO

This history of crime, criminology, and criminalistics constitute a lively field of social and cultural history. In recent decades, many studies have dealt with the changing ideas of the causes and forms of social deviance, its investigative possibilities, and how it can be remedied. The scientization of criminology and crime investigations at the turn of the 20th century led to the creation of entirely new scholarly fields and thus also to the transformation of opinions on the causes of crime, its perpetrators, and the ways in which to deal with it. The interwar period further advanced the scientific approach to crime. European authoritarian regimes used some of these methods to socially and culturally exclude unwanted groups from the population, criminalize them, and, in certain cases, even to physically destroy them. The definition and study of crime naturally entered the discourses typical of the totalitarian versions of European modernity.

In parallel with the changing definitions and styles of investigating social deviance, methods to identify its perpetrators, and convict them rapidly developed. In many cases, they have had a massive impact on our understanding of criminal behavior and its social perception. Fingerprinting made it possible for perpetrators to be convicted without eyewitness statements for the first time in history. Later, so did revolutionary laboratory analyses of trace evidence. Advanced perpetrator and crime databases, in turn, enabled the identification of repeat offenders and their criminal practices. This helped create a new cultural type—a habitual criminal, seen as the embodiment of the ultimate menace to society.

The emergence of the mass society brought about an increasingly dynamic public awareness of various crimes, which became one of the defining moments of modern mass media. Thanks to journalistic crime reporting, the media not only established itself in an economically competitive market, but also helped define urban modernity through its detailed and often emotionally charged crime reporting. While the media maintained this function during the 20th century in liberal regimes, in the Central European environment its role changed significantly after it was nationalized after the Second World War. Its involvement in defining crime diminished and instead it published centrally formulated statements intended to support the mobilization of the population in favor of collective goals and to exclude those who were not allowed to partake in the realization of these goals.
The current Střed/Centre issue will therefore be devoted to the history of crime and the various practices associated with it in Central Europe starting roughly around 1800. Possible topics of the individual papers may include, for example:

1.) The general development of crime and its various forms
2.) The transformation of the expert discourses related to crime, especially in the field of criminology and criminalistics
3.) Public and media discourses on crime, its perpetrators, and punishment
4.) This history of the criminalization of certain social groups
5.) Questions of social discipline and control
6.) The development of police and court practices
7.) The history of the prison systems