Clifford Shearing: New Worlds: Implications for Criminology

A defining feature of the twenty-first century is the rise of new worlds of existence and the shifting nature of global harms associated with them. These new worlds are the ‘new earth’ or the age of the Anthropocene which references the negative impacts that humankind has on the environment, and the new space of existence, cyberspace, characterised by the shift to a digital age, recently termed the ‘Novacene’. These new worlds - the Anthropocene and the Novacene - have both amplified existing global harms as well as created new ones, whilst also challenging conventional criminal justice responses. Clifford will consider the emergence of these new worlds that are shifting conceptions of security and governance.  He will do so via a consideration of research that he is currently undertaking on resilience.  

About the speaker

Clifford Shearing holds Professorships at the Universities of Griffith, Cape Town, and Montreal. He also holds an appointment at the University of New South Wales as a Visiting Professorial Fellow. Shearing has, throughout his career, sought to reshape understandings of policing. He, with his collaborators, has coined terms such as “mass private property”, the “governance of security” and “nodal governance” that have become common parlance within the criminological lexicon. His analyses have been influential in developing "policing studies" as an area of enquiry beyond "police studies”.

His current work is focused on reshaping the boundaries of criminological studies in ways that enable criminologists to engage with the shifts in the risk landscapes that are characterising the 21st Century. Shearing has been actively engaged in enhancing the safety of people's lives through a variety of policy and other practical engagements across the globe — for example, in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. He co-authored the influential 1999 Patten Commission report on policing in Northern Ireland and co-authored a landmark 2014 report by the Council of Canadian Academies, commissioned by the Government of Canada, entitled Policing Canada in the 21st Century: New Policing for New Challenges. This report builds on early co-authored reports published by the Canadian Law Reform Commission on global developments in policing. His recent books include: Criminology and the Anthropocene, Routledge, 2017 (ed with Holley); Security in the Anthropocene: Reflections on Safety and Care, Transcript, 2017 (with Harrington); Criminology and Climate: Insurance, Finance and the Regulation of Harmscapes, Routledge, 2020 (eds with Holley and Phelan).

Please register to attend in person