What can Systems Theory Do for You?(Essay‪)‬

Criminology is interdisciplinary by nature, integrating social, psychological and legal theory often with a view to discovering the causes of crime, or perhaps (but no more straightforwardly) what we can do about it. These are the thoughts of a lawyer who has, through looking outside the boundaries of his subject, discovered a world in which the worth of his first discipline is called into question. Through a brief exposition of some of the important points a social theory of systems--or 'cybernetics'--has to offer, we see that while interdisciplinary study can lead us to the brink such that we begin to doubt the relevance of our field, the process gives us the power to re-organise our endeavours to more productive ends. This, perhaps, is the true progenitor of progress; a movement of standpoint that allows us to learn from mistakes which for the most part we cannot perceive. In 1968, German lawyer-turned-sociologist Niklas Luhmann set about documenting a theory that would become his life's work. Over the next thirty years until his death in 1998, he published details of a universal theory of modern society. In 2001 the author of this paper, a lawyer-turned-criminologist, stumbled across Luhmann's systems theory nestled in the pages of a general text on contemporary social theory. After three readings I understood none of it. As an UK academic has said in his review of one of Luhmann's texts: