The Disarray of Criminal Liability. Criminal Policy and the Politics of the Self

With respect to what is so characteristic for modern societies there can presently be observed both, an upgrading and a marginalization of the individual and the subjectivity by a "politics of the self". Giddens, Boltanski/Chiapello as well as Foucault and the followers of his concept of governmentality" discuss this process from different perspectives. What is symptomatic for the politics of the self is its "exploitation" (or: instrumentation) of the ethnic identity of the individual to the profit of political power and economic efficiency. This leads to a "subjectivation" of distributional conflicts and an ethnicity of criminal policy. The social political self-responsibility and self-reliance corresponds on the field of criminal policy with an individualistic attribution of crime, which goes together with an empathy with the victim. However, in the population, there seems to exist a certain resistance towards this policy; a high level of self-dependence can be accompanied by sensitivity and empathy for the criminal, at least as far as low and middle delinquency is concerned.