Nils Christie

Bio: Nils Christie is an academic researcher from University of Oslo. The author has contributed to research in topics: Punishment & Crime control. The author has an hindex of 12, co-authored 32 publications receiving 2796 citations.

Criminal justice policies: Trends and their impact on prison health

Abstract: The general theme for this conference is ‘prisons and public health’. Therefore, let me begin with an obvious, but often ignored point, by saying: the best tool for improved prison health is to reduce the prison population. Such a measure would also reduce crime, but I ignore that point here, and concentrate on health. Punishment is intended delivery of pain. Prisons represent a major instrument for the delivery of that pain. Those working in the prisons do much to alleviate pain, as beautifully illustrated by Alison Liebling (2004) in her book Prisons and their moral performance. In individual cases, prisoners might also profit from spending some time in prison.2 None the less, prisons are close relatives to capital punishment. Not the whole life, but parts, of a person’s life is taken. I have never been able to forget an elderly man I once met in the major prison in Oslo. ‘Spring is the worst’, he said. ‘Not because of the explosions in green pleasures outside, but because it was in spring that I was imprisoned. Each new spring is a reminder that one more year is lost. There are not so many left.’

Deviance as strength

Abstract: I have an acquaintance who is manic depressive. Right now he is manic. He calls me regularly to tell me how things are going. Last week he told me that he would soon be very rich. However, he will give most of it away. Several years ago he bought 20 Rolls-Royces while in a similar phase. He has written about it in a play that has been produced, therefore I’m not being indiscrete when I mention this. He is an exceptionally happy man, when he is happy. And he is equally unhappy when he falls down into the black hole. I do not believe, however, that he would trade his life for someone else’s. I tried to stop him once while he was in an in-between phase, on the upswing. He politely rejected my attempt. It is his life. It has to be his decision. But does he hurt others? He does, doesn’t he? The Rolls-Royce dealer. And he is swept up in many storms. Be that as it may, I think it is difficult to intrude into this situation with my common sense. It is his life. It is equally difficult to have an opinion on something, based on my own experiences, concerning other people’s lives. Let me present some claims regarding which I have many objections: that I both like and dislike, that I both believe in and reject. Here they are:

Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California

Abstract: Preface and Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Prologue: The Bus 1. Introduction 2. The California Political Economy 3. The Prison Fix 4. Crime, Croplands, and Capitalism 5. Mothers Reclaiming Our Children 6. What Is to Be Done? Epilogue: Another Bus Notes

The Ideal Victim

Abstract: It is often useful within the social sciences to rely on personal experiences, or at least take this as our point of departure. So, given the challenge to lecture on the topic “Society and the victim,” I started out with some reflections on my own past history. Had I ever been a victim, and if so, when and how? And I will ask you in this audience to engage in the same exercise. Have you ever been victims? When was that? Where was it? What characterized the situation? How did you react? How did your surroundings react? Maybe I could ask you to scribble down just a few words from your own personal histories as a victim, not for my use, but for your own. Such personal memories might prove valuable during my presentation, and particularly during our later discussions.

Restorative Justice: Assessing Optimistic and Pessimistic Accounts

Abstract: For informal justice to be restorative justice, it has to be about restoring victims, restoring offenders, and restoring communities as a result of participation of a plurality of stakeholders. This means that victim-offender mediation, healing circles, family group conferences, restorative probation, reparation boards on the Vermont model, whole school antibullying programs, Chinese Bang Jiao programs, and exit conferences following Western business regulatory inspections can at times all be restorative justice. Sets of both optimistic propositions and pessimistic claims can be made about restorative justice by contemplating the global diversity of its practice. Examination of both the optimistic and the pessimistic propositions sheds light on prospects for restorative justice. Regulatory theory (a responsive regulatory pyramid) may be more useful for preventing crime in a normatively acceptable way than existing criminal law jurisprudence and explanatory theory. Evidence-based reform must move toward a ...

Pre-crime and post-criminology?:

Abstract: Conventionally, crime is regarded principally as harm or wrong and the dominant ordering practices arise post hoc. In the emerging pre-crime society, crime is conceived essentially as risk or potential loss, ordering practices are pre-emptive and security is a commodity sold for profit. Though this dichotomy oversimplifies a more complex set of changes, it captures an important temporal shift. As the intellectual offspring of the post-crime society, criminology must adapt to meet the challenges of pre-crime and security. This article examines the key features a theory of security needs to encompass. It explores the immanent capacities of criminology for change and suggests exterior intellectual resources upon which it might draw. It concludes that the pre-crime society need not be a post-criminological one.

SCANDINAVIAN EXCEPTIONALISM IN AN ERA OF PENAL EXCESS Part I : The Nature and Roots of Scandinavian Exceptionalism

Abstract: This is the fi rst of a two-part paper on penal exceptionalism in Scandinavia — that is, low rates of imprisonment and humane prison conditions. Part I examines the roots of this exceptionalism in Finland, Norway and Sweden, arguing that it emerges from the cultures of equality that existed in these countries which were then embedded in their social fabrics through the universalism of the Scandinavian welfare state.