The technology and the artefacts of social control – Monitoring criminal and anti-social behaviour through and in media cultures

• Published date: 21 December 2010
• Pages: 109-128
• Date: 21 December 2010
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S1521-6136(2010)0000015008
• Author: Stuart Connor,Richard Huggins

THE TECHNOLOGY AND

THE ARTEFACTS OF SOCIAL

CONTROL – MONITORING

CRIMINAL AND ANTI-SOCIAL

BEHAVIOUR THROUGH AND

IN MEDIA CULTURES

Stuart Connor and Richard Huggins

ABSTRACT

The potential afforded by contemporary forms of surveillance to monitor

vast amounts of information raises a number of problems, including ‘who

or what’ should be distinguished as the subject of surveillance and how is

the extension and intensification of surveillance to be legitimated without

encroaching on the sensibilities of those who deem themselves innocent.

It is argued that the ‘chav’, one of the latest variants of an underclass

discourse to emerge in the United Kingdom, provides an example of how

an ideological figure can be employed both to justify the introduction of

disciplinary surveillance technologies and become the proposed identifica-

tion of targets for such apparatus. Following an outline of the term

underclass and a guide to the language and imagery of the ‘chav’, the

argument presented in this chapter is developed and represented through

Social Control: Informal, Legal and Medical

Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Volume 15, 109–128

Copyright r2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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ISSN: 1521-6136/doi:10.1108/S1521-6136(2010)0000015008

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an examination of a range of media representing and responding to anti-

social behaviour. The utilisation of media to render visible and represent

those seen as responsible for anti-social and criminal behaviour is both an

application of new technologies of surveillance and a re-invention of older

forms of collective and communal punishment, control and regulation.

What these examples share is the communication of a frame that equates

‘chavs’ with ‘anti-social’ behaviour and surveillance as a central

component of any strategy for community safety. Thus, rather than the

existence of ‘chavs’, or any allegedly threatening ‘other’ requiring

surveillance, it is argued that it is surveillance that requires the existence

of the ‘chav’. Put another way, if ‘chavs’ did not exist, then, for the

exponents of surveillance at least, they would have to be invented.

FRAMING ‘CHAVS’: THE SUBJECT OF

SURVEILLANCE

An inherent and necessary characteristic of surveillance is that a distinction

needs to be drawn between the surveyor and those to be surveyed. This may

appear to be a rather obvious statement to make, but the question of how

this distinction is drawn is important, not only for the technical and

practical purposes of establishing who is to survey and who is to be the

target for surveillance but also because it goes to the heart of questions

regarding the legitimacy or otherwise of surveillance as a strategy of

government. At a time when the arguments and attempts to undertake

surveillance appear to be extended and intensified, how do the proponents

of surveillance seek to reassure ‘innocents’ that they are not to be subject to

the surveillance gaze. It is argued here that the twin aims of establishing

the need for surveillance and then assuring the ‘public’ that it is safe from

both the alleged threat and the scrutiny of surveillance are achieved through

what is perhaps the archetypical device for influencing political opinion, the

evocation of the ‘other’.

In contemporary society, a number of alleged others are available, but

of particular interest to this chapter is the maintenance and legacy of this

distinction in the citizenry through the continued circulation of contem-

porary underclass discourses. In Britain, a number of governments have

been keen to differentiate between the much vaunted ‘hardworking families

and tax payers’,

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and a rediscovery of an alleged virulent underclass.

In recent years, this underclass has been expressed in the public imaginary

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