State violence and violent crime

Abstract

Last year's American Society of Criminology conference examined the theme “Violent Crime and Its Victims.” Yet amidst the hundreds of papers it produced, only a handful addressed state violence and its countless victims. Despite its neglect by the mainstream, state violence is an important criminological concern that is essential to any meaningful discussion of crime control. The problem of state violence must be faced in its own right. But understanding its connections to more traditional violent crimes will also be our only hope for alleviating suffering in our societies. As an exercise in peacemaking criminology, we must illustrate the problem of state violence, identify its different forms (including those most often ignored by criminol‐ogists), and describe the connections between state crime and traditional violent crimes.