Regulating Crime and the International Crime Drop

• Author: Ronald Clarke
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567720903378
• Date: 01 September 2021
• Subject Matter: Bentham and Police

Bentham and Police

Regulating Crime and the

International Crime Drop

Ronald Clarke

1

Abstract

Michael Quinn’s article reveals that Jeremy Bentham strongly endorsed the suggestions of Patrick

Colquhoun, a London magistrate, for reducing the myriad of tempting opportunities for crime in

large cities like London. However, it was Colquhoun’s other, positivist ideas about training the poor

to resist these temptations that helped determine crime policy for the next 150 years. This positivist

agenda has recently been criticized by environmental criminologists and crime scientists, who have

revived Colquhoun’s ideas about reducing opportunities for crime and who have advanced the

security hypothesis as the explanation for the international drop in crime.

Keywords

Bentham, Colquhoun, positivism, Environmental Criminology, Crime Science, reducing

opportunities for crime, the security hypothesis, the international crime drop

Michael Quinn’s remarkable article includes the revelation that Patrick Colquhoun’s Treatise of

the Metropolis was strongly endorsed and supported by Jeremy Bentham, his great contemporary.

It appears that Bentham sought out Colquhoun in order to advise him how to get his ideas into

legislation. Ultimately, Bentham’s efforts were unsuccessful, but the fact that the greatest English

philosopher of the day took Colquhoun ideas so seriously is of the utmost importance. It is clear

from Quinn’s article that Bentham, in an unexpectedly humble role, regarded himself as merely

Colquhoun’s assistant. Without Bentham’s endorsement, Colquhoun’s Treatise could be easily be

dismissed as the ramblings of an obscure London magistrate.

In fact, there were two planks to Colquhoun’s Treatise. The first was an extraordinarily detailed

set of prescriptions for closing the myriad opportunities for crime arising from the varied institu-

tions, agencies, activities, and practices of the modern city that was then London. The second plank

was a detailed agenda of control for enabling the poor to resist the temptations to crime laid out

before them. Unfortunately, it was this second plank that was in tune with the liberal, welfarist ideas

of the day, and which for the next 150 years guided crime policy. Not only did this plank determine

future policy, but it also launched criminology on a determinedly positivist course where individ-

uals’ criminality was believed to be inexorably governed by their past.

1

School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University–Newark, NJ, USA

Corresponding Author:

Ronald Clarke, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University–Newark, NJ 07102, USA.

Email: rvgclarke@aol.com

International CriminalJustice Review

2021, Vol. 31(3) 257-259

ª2020 Georgia State University

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DOI: 10.1177/1057567720903378

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