Power

Abstract

I have suggested earlier that I take it that human behaviour is the product of constrained will. This is, I think, a fundamental shift for criminologists (perhaps with the exception of David Matza). Conventionally the aetiology of crime has been said to lie between two conceptions of the human: the determined and the free. The determined human is more or less a slave to things beyond his control such as his biology, his psychology, or his social environment. The free individual is said to be at liberty to follow his hedonistic desires. It has been clear for some time that these conceptions of the human in their purest form are inadequate accounts of our condition. The champion of determinism, who says that we can never do anything other than just exactly what we do do, denies the experience and the reality of human choice — there is always at least one alternative, to do, or not to do, or at least to resist or not to resist — they further deny the possibility of the compatibility of freedom and determinism. Most soft accounts of determinism — possibly compatibilist accounts — have at their heart an assumption that certain aspects of the world are fixed and no amount of human freedom can change these things.