Criminological Engagement Research Articles

Biology and Criminology: Data Practices and the Creation of Anatomic and Genomic Body ‘Types’

The use of biometrics for the creation of visual ‘body types’ needs continued criminological engagement. This article discusses Lombroso’s practice of typing ‘born criminals’ vis-à-vis genomic phenotyping used to identify potential suspects. Both are prevalent examples of scientizing police and legal work. While Lombroso draws on anatomy to explain causes of criminal behavior, phenotyping is based on genomic and physiognomic correlation to help identify suspects. Despite these differences, both forms of visualizing bodies, we argue, are also a practice of marking. Especially in the context of crime and crime control, marking is a sensitive and political practice. Since typing is embedded in criminology, our analysis is also a critical engagement with criminology itself.

Sustainable urban form: socio-demographic and permeability factors as determinants of crime spots in cities, case of Akure, Nigeria

ABSTRACT Urbanization comes with the price of the negative complexity of crime. It is a reflection of the socio-demographic and permeability factors. This paper aims to integrate socio-demographic crime factors with street permeability to find the association with residential burglary spots. We first find the residential burglary hotspots area related to socio-demographic factors of the study area, then identify potential residential burglary risk areas based on the factors of street permeability and find the association of residential burglary with socio-demographics and street permeability factors in Akure. The methodology employed includes the Inverse Distance Weight factor analysis, space syntax, and the Poisson regression analysis. The findings showed hotspots of burglary within neighbourhoods, confirming the relationship between the factors. Issues identified herein denote some logical starting points for criminological engagement with the Sustainable Development Goals. In the conclusion, we discussed the implications for the statistical output.

Latin American green criminology

This article traces the trajectory of green criminology in Latin America from the 1960s’ liberation criminology to the current Southern green criminology. The purpose of this genealogical account is twofold: first, it uncovers the evolution of the Latin American criminological engagement with green crime, and second, politically it reclaims the epistemological power of the South by highlighting how critical thinkers on the continent anticipated ideas now in vogue in English-speaking criminology. The memory exercise that is this article builds on the premise that true decolonising projects must recall and build on the histories of endogenous thought of (neo)colonial locations. The article is based on an archaeological exploration of the engagements of Latin American intellectuals with the study of environmental crime and harm, combined with the author’s field observations.

The Criminogenic Nature of Food Production Harm Responses: A Case Study of Anaerobic Digestion Technology Subsidies in Northern Ireland

Meat production in its current shape is burdened with multiple environmental challenges. Technological solutions have been touted as a means of reconciliation of economic growth and environmental sustainability. In Northern Ireland, anaerobic digestion (AD) technology was presented as a solution for more sustainable animal waste management and greenhouse gas emission reduction in the context of the Going for Growth (GfG) agrifood strategy. AD sites were also eligible for the Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) subsidy support scheme. While criminological engagement with the issues around food crime is yet inchoate, even less attention has been paid to the issue of the criminogenic nature of responses to food production harm. The paper fills this lacuna by discussing how an ostensibly positive initiative of incentivising AD through subsidy provision may have criminogenic potential: it may exacerbate environmental harm due to its ineffectiveness for dealing with ammonia emissions from animal waste, and create opportunities for deviance, such as breaches in planning regulation and subsidy fraud.

Where Is This Story Going? A Critical Analysis of the Emerging Field of Narrative Criminology

Over the past decade, a growing body of literature has emerged under the umbrella of narrative criminology. We trace the origins of this field to narrative scholarship in the social sciences more broadly and review the recent history of criminological engagement in this field. We then review contemporary developments, paying particular attention to research around desistance and victimology. Our review highlights the most important critiques and challenges for narrative criminology and suggests fruitful directions in moving forward. We conclude by making a case for the consolidation and integration of narrative criminology, in hopes that this movement becomes more than an isolated clique.

Intoxicating the ‘charmed circle’: Constructions of deviance and normativity by people who combine drugs and sex

Sex involving illicit drugs is currently receiving close academic attention. For the most part, research in this area is public health orientated and focuses on the experiences of men who have sex with men engaging in ‘chemsex’. In the current article, I use in-depth interview data from 14 participants across a range of gender and sexual identities to undertake a queer criminological analysis of sex on drugs. Taking Gayle Rubin’s foundational Thinking Sex as a starting point, I argue that participants’ narratives construct a sober/drug-involved sex hierarchy in which the former is afforded a higher status. I then utilise critical work on drug ‘effects’, Tim Dean’s work on ‘raw sex’ and notions of stigma to interrogate assumptions underpinning this hierarchy. I argue that the perceived artificial nature of intoxicated intimacy, the unmediated appeal of sober sexual intimacy and stigma connected to certain drugs and certain sex-on-drug-practices underlie participants talk. I conclude that ‘thinking sex on drugs’ demonstrates the productive potential of criminological engagement with queer theory, and vice versa.

Regulatory Rollback and White-Collar Crime in the Era of Trump: The Challenges of Perspective

Our objective is to provide a conceptual and comparative framework for criminological engagement with the issues raised by the regulatory rollback scheme promoted by the Trump administration. We begin with invoking the notion of an “imaginary social order,” followed with identifying some core rationales for regulation, the complexities and contradictions, and the areas where the Trump administration favors more, not less regulation. The purpose and actual history of regulation in the United States is addressed as current regulatory rollback initiatives should be analyzed in relation to this history. In addition, regulatory issues ought to be understood in terms of their role in an increasingly complex and constantly evolving capitalist economy.

Earth–world–planet: Rural ecologies of horror and dark green criminology

This article responds to green criminology. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of the coal-producing region of Appalachia and the processes of mountaintop removal mining, the article engages contemporary philosophy, ecocriticism, and “dark ecology” to suggest that green criminology rethink its linguistic categories and epistemological assumptions. The article employs an analysis of some examples of horror cinema to suggest criminological engagement with “ecologies of horror” and the “horrors of ecology” that condition life in the shadow of harmful modes of resource extraction. It concludes with some thoughts on the potential of a “dark” green and green-cultural criminology.

Criminology, gender and security in the Australian context: Making women’s lives matter

This article examines how it might be possible to make women’s lives matter in contemporary criminological understandings of security. In doing so it considers the conceptual complexity of security, and reflects on the criminological engagement with that complexity and the feminist contribution to it paying particular attention to current concerns with everyday security. The article deploys the contemporary Australian policy agenda on family violence to illustrate the paradoxes to be found within these current pre-occupations. Drawing on feminist informed work that situates violence against women within the conceptual framework of everyday terrorism, it concludes by offering further consideration to the meaning of everyday security and the implications that this has for contemporary criminological concerns with security.

Green Criminology Before ‘Green Criminology’: Amnesia and Absences

Although the first published use of the term ‘green criminology’ seems to have been made by Lynch (Green criminology. Aldershot, Hampshire, 1990/2006), elements of the analysis and critique represented by the term were established well before this date. There is much criminological engagement with, and analysis of, environmental crime and harm that occurred prior to 1990 that deserves acknowledgement. In this article, we try to illuminate some of the antecedents of green criminology. Proceeding in this way allows us to learn from ‘absences’, i.e. knowledge that existed but has been forgotten. We conclude by referring to green criminology not as an exclusionary label or barrier but as a symbol that guides and inspires the direction of research.

New abolition, criminology and a critical carceral studies

Criminology has been slow to open up a conversation about decarceration and abolition in comparison with other disciplines, including history, geography, and gender, race, and critical ethnic studies. Scholars from these areas and actors on the ground—close up to confinement—have done most of the organizing against mass incarceration and theorizing of alternative possibilities. Why those experiences—and the theoretical traditions that inform their work—have been less recognized and developed in criminology is of pivotal concern as more criminologists move forward with the political project of decarceration. The extent to which criminology can sustain an alternative or abolitionist politics remains an open question. Amid growing conversations about decarceration and shifting rhetorics on punishment, we address some of the obstacles that limit criminology as a site from which to engage the abolitionist project, asking where criminologists might turn for interventionist models that move away from imprisonment and the violence of the carceral state. In this article, we advocate for and discuss the contours of critical carceral studies, a growing interdisciplinary movement for engaged scholarly and activist production against the carceral state. We discuss the imperatives for criminological engagement with critical carceral studies and sketch some of the terrain on which the discipline can contribute to the project, including important work to counter criminological discourses and knowledge production that reify and reproduce carceral logics and practices.

Fractured Lives, Splintered Knowledge: Making Criminological Sense of the January, 2015 Terrorist Attacks in Paris

Cottee (Br J Criminol 54(6):981–1001, 2014) makes the case that criminology has much to contribute to an understanding of theistic violence. However the ‘hubris of positivism’ (Young in The criminological imagination, Polity, Cambridge, 2011) curtails the criminological imagination and this is particularly evident in the debates that permeate contemporary understandings of religious extremism and radicalisation. Using the terrorist attacks in France 2015 as a touchstone, this paper explores the current state of criminological engagement with these issues. First a synopsis of orthodox current criminological talk about religious extremism and violent crime is considered. Next a critical analysis of the events in Paris based around what is ‘known’ about them is offered in the light of this knowledge. Finally, drawing on the work of Young (2011) the implications of this analysis for criminology are considered resulting in a refinement of the biases identified by Cottee (2014).

Rethinking the Criminology of Crimes of States: Monumental, Mundane, Mislabeled and Miscalculated Crimes

This article provides a reflexive account on criminological engagement with crimes of states, with special attention to the case of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, and Berlin and Germany today. The emergence of a criminology of crimes of states is reviewed, along with arguments for and against criminological engagement with such crime. In particular, a response to Carrier and Park’s (2013) critique of ‘entrepreneurial criminology’ is provided in this context. Distinctions are drawn between monumental and mundane crimes of states, and mislabeled and miscalculated crimes of states, with special attention to mundane and miscalculated crimes. A brief concluding section identifies some issues that might be included in an agenda for a criminology of crimes of states, going forward.

Governmentality, Critical Criminology, and the Absent Norm

Since the late 1980s, emerging Canadian criminologists have turned in great numbers to Foucault for a common theoretical, not to mention substantive, base. However, this has not fared equally well on all levels of criminological engagement. Toward an analysis of the relationship between critical criminology and “governmentality,” this article proceeds with a brief examination of the constituents of disciplinary integrity. This is followed by commentary on relations of power and subordination. Drawing on Fraser's (1989) critique of Foucault, the author argues that while governmentality slices criminal justice policy and practice to expose hidden continuities and breaks, the sharpness of the cut depends upon normative assumptions that remain contradictory or ungrounded, and this stands in the way of praxis.

Governmentality, Critical Criminology, and the Absent Norm

Since the late 1980s, emerging Canadian criminologists have turned in great numbers to Foucault for a common theoretical, not to mention substantive, base. However, this has not fared equally well on all levels of criminological engagement. Toward an analysis of the relationship between critical criminology and “governmentality,” this article proceeds with a brief examination of the constituents of disciplinary integrity. This is followed by commentary on relations of power and subordination. Drawing on Fraser's (1989) critique of Foucault, the author argues that while governmentality slices criminal justice policy and practice to expose hidden continuities and breaks, the sharpness of the cut depends upon normative assumptions that remain contradictory or ungrounded, and this stands in the way of praxis.

Crimes of the State: The Persecution and Protection of Refugees

When refugees arrive at the borders and on the shores of the Global North they are increasingly criminalised and subject to a range of law and order type rhetoric and practices. This paper outlines an alternative criminological engagement with the condition of refugeehood that shifts the focus from the refugee to the practices of the state. First, it splices definitions of state crime with the highly legalistic refugee definition to offer alternative conceptualisations of persecution in the determination of who is accorded the legal status of refugee. Second, it applies state crime frameworks to the increasingly restrictive and punitive refugee policies of countries in the Global North. It concludes by locating theorisations of state crime within the broader project of reconceptualising notions of sovereignty.

Perverse Criminologies: The Closet of Doctor Lombroso

This article argues for the importance of (homo)sexuality to the criminological enterprise. It traces a course of criminological engagement with homosexuality from the works of Lombroso and the early sexologists, through the 'nuts, sluts and perverts' period of interactionism to gay activism and polemic against homophobic violence and discrimination. Criminology is seen to have lumped both the 'criminal' and the 'homosexual' together in its early manifestation before ceding its interest to medicine and the law. In criminology's mid-period, homosexuality is taken up again as part of the interactionist 'sociology of deviance' project before it is dropped again by radicals more interested in the politics of class and race. Currently in criminology sexuality is slowly being granted to women (the young and black were - sometimes jealously? - assumed to have it already) and homosexuality is increasingly admitted to the list of victims of crime. What might be the scope within criminology for gay empiricism, standpointism or 'queer theory'? Moreover, what might this mean for the 'masculinity' turn in some recent criminology?