This book is very much a product of contemporary theorising and discussion about the social and cultural processes taking place in liberal democratic societies. Many writers have attempted to capture the social, economic and cultural dynamics of contemporary western society, using words like risk, anxiety and uncertainty to describe a time of huge transformation from an earlier post-war ‘Golden Age’ of increasing affluence and full employment in Europe and North America. It is argued that social identities have become increasingly problematic and contestable in contemporary western society because traditional social affiliations, based on family or social class, have been increasingly eroded; moreover, rising individualisation, alongside the fragmentation of communities, has led to the self becoming a task that is under continuous construction. At the same time, contemporary democratic societies are marked by social differences in terms of ethnicity, religion, sexuality, age and so forth, and these differences can bring to crisis core tenets of liberal democratic states relating to notions of citizenship and individual rights, which themselves are under stress from factors such as globalisation and migration.

This book involves placing a critical lens upon the notions of identity and community, exploring the issues that these raise for a criminal justice context. Civil disturbances involving conflict between different ‘racial’, ethnic and/or religious groupings, such as those occurring in Birmingham, England, in 2005, which featured Black, and Pakistani and Bangladeshi, youth, illustrate the problems of disorder and violence that can arise from the formation and expression of resistance identities, which are generated by actors who perceive themselves to be in devalued positions. Moreover, a number of high-profile cases – including, for example, the racist murders of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 and Zahid Mubarek in 2000, and the homophobia-motivated murder of Jody Dobrowski in 2005 – illustrate further the significance of social identities when considering crime, victimisation and criminal justice. Indeed, the burgeoning ‘equality and diversity industry’ that is now endemic to the criminal justice system, and the focus given to community participation, engagement and dialogue, bear further testimony to the centrality of identity and community issues.

This book is also a reaction to a number of crises facing contemporary criminology.