The Problem of Violent Crime

• In Event: Political Philosophy Perspectives on Policing

Abstract

‘Violent crime’ as a category in criminal law has recently come under fire from a variety of sources: legal scholars, philosophers, and police abolitionists. Critics complain that the category is far less determinate than we might think, far less relevant for the purposes to which it is currently put, and ultimately descriptively legitimates a normatively illegitimate system. I defend several claims in this paper. First, objections to relying on the category ‘violent crime’ in the criminal legal system can be deployed just as effectively against likely categorical alternatives. Second, despite the various objections raised against violent crime as a category, it is quite effective for the purposes of crafting a criminal legal code with valuable characteristics in diverse and dynamic societies. And finally, borrowing from similar disputes in the philosophy of science, I suggest that this taxonomic dispute provides a more general lesson for political philosophy: our justificatory aims also guide our justificatory taxonomies and concepts, and this gives us leverage for supporting certain conceptions of violence over others.

Author

• Jake Monaghan, University of Southern California