Pioneering Critical Criminology in Canada

Abstract

In this essay I present an unabashed account of my efforts to launch a critical criminology in Anglo-Canada. Accomplishing this feat required that I, and others, build an institutional base and scholarly network that would debunk the “liberal” version of criminology that dominated interpretations of crime and social control at the time. I describe some of the challenges marking the formation of the “critical” perspective in Canada and trace the broad developments leading to its current problems and possibilities. Though wry and anecdotal, this account seeks to identify the interplay of professional motivations and structural constraints that have continually subverted the promise of critical criminology and still threaten to drain its vital force or plunge it back into the close-knit but inconsequential marginality of early days.