John Braithwaite and Crime, Shame and Reintegration: Some Reflections on Theory and Criminology

John Braithwaite's ‘republican theory of criminology’ (1989) claims to offer a new general theory of crime, an account of ‘the good society’ and a set of policy prescriptions for effective crime control. Along the way he has spelt out a moral theory grounded in communitarianism, and refined his own version of a ‘progressive’ politics. This paper examines two central aspects of Braithwaite's work. Given Braithwaite's claim to say why ‘some kinds of individuals and some kinds of societies exhibit more crime’, the paper suggests his answers to this question and the adequacy of his notion of good social science are severely wanting. Braithwaite's claim to be offering a theory of the moral shares with the Durkheimian tradition he draws on, a refusal of the moral. The contemporary praise accorded Braithwaite's work is a sign both of intellectual desperation and of a pervasive nostalgia for a return to ‘community’ exemplified in the work of communitarians like Macintyre (1981) and Bellah (1985).