Critical Criminology Research Articles

Book review: Sport and Crime: Towards a Critical Criminology of Sport by P Millward, JAL Ludvigsen and J Sly

Book review: <i>Sport and Crime: Towards a Critical Criminology of Sport</i> by P Millward, JAL Ludvigsen and J Sly

Critical Criminology, Canadian Edition

According to scholars of public criminology and public sociology, our classroom teaching – including our lectures, course material, and syllabi – are forms of public criminology. If we take this to be true, a scholarly examination of these spaces is imperative. Critical criminology has operated since its inception as a subfield without clear boundaries, and within undergraduate curriculums it has been consistently marginalized as a central topic of study and teaching. In this urgent context, we provide an analysis of the dynamics of the field. Using course syllabi data and departmental data, we examine what constitutes the current critical criminology curriculum in Canada. As such, we explore (1) where it is; (2) what it is; (3) and who it is. Our analyses indicate that critical criminology is understood in both unifying and contradictory ways, is both topical and theoretical, and remains geographically varied. We outline some exploratory analyses about the place of critical scholarship in Canadian undergraduate curriculums and about the field more broadly.

Barbarians at the Tills? Post-pandemic reflections on violence and abuse against workers in the retail industry

The UK retail sector is witnessing substantial increases in violence and abuse towards its customer-facing workers in the post-pandemic era. The costs of this violence to employee wellbeing, local community stability and economic losses to the retail industry are manifold. COVID-19 has been implicated as a central driver in these increases, as the legacy of abuse in retail settings during the pandemic lockdowns continues to affect workers across the sector. This article adopts a series of conceptual tools from critical criminology to argue that rising violence against retail staff cannot be explained by the pandemic alone. Rather, criminology must consider these trends against a background of longer-standing increases in interpersonal violence and rapidly shifting cultural currents under late-neoliberal capitalism. This article also reflects on the hardening of consumer subjectivities and declining deference to mechanisms of authority that continue to manifest under postmodern cultural conditions. These all serve as prominent features in the contextual aetiology of abuse against retail staff and render the possibility of addressing retail violence through deterrence and prevention measures problematic.

The Overstated Challenge: Analysing the Challenge of Southern Criminology to the Hegemony of Northern Criminology and its Implications for Criminological Theory in the 21st Century

In an era marked by the escalating globalisation of crime, the import of Southern criminology has progressively transitioned from a marginalised field to a central focus in research.[1] This transition presents theoretical challenges to criminology in the Northern Hemisphere.[2] This essay posits that while Southern criminology challenges Northern criminology’s hegemony, these challenges are ultimately overstated. Recognising and addressing these challenges is imperative for improving the epistemological framework and theoretical contributions of criminology, thereby equipping it to confront 21st-century criminal phenomena more effectively. [1] Matthews, Roger. “False Starts, Wrong Turns and Dead Ends: Reflections on Recent Developments in Criminology.” Critical Criminology 25, no. 4 (2017): 577-591. [2] Greenberg, David F. “The Weak Strength of Social Control Theory.” Crime &amp; Delinquency 45, no. 1 (1999): 66–81.

In Defense of Abused Women: Rural Critical Criminology in the Courtroom

Many critical criminologists assert that criminal courts only function on behalf of powerful interests. Nothing could be further from the truth. Drawing heavily on my recent work as an expert witness assisting rural battered women in conflict with the Kentucky legal system, the main objective of this paper is to show that a courtroom can be a site of progressive struggle and resistance. Indeed, the courtroom is what the late Ian Taylor defines as a “political place,” and this paper demonstrates that positive outcomes for incarcerated abused women can occur when rural critical criminologists enter this space.

Strain sebagai pendorong mahasiswa menggunakan pinjol ilegal: Analisis viktimisasi mahasiswa korban pinjol ilegal

Background: The cases range from socialization that requires students to participate in using online loans, to murders with the motive of paying for online loans. Illegal online loans cases continue to push the urgency of research that analyzes why many students become users of illegal online loans. Findings: Although the number of students using illegal online loans continues to increase, the victimization experience of students using illegal online loans is still very little researched. Student status places someone as an academic, someone who is highly educated and has critical and analytical thinking skills. Methods: This study uses a critical criminology method with the use of a qualitative approach to produce strain analysis. This study uses data mining with a qualitative approach with a structured interview methodology. This study also found that the impact of illegal online loans on students is very disruptive to their lives on a large scale and in the long term. Conclusion: Students experience losses from the burden of illegal online loan costs which are very large because financial exploitation through interest and hidden fees is very large due to their limited financial capabilities. The magnitude of financial losses from illegal online loans greatly disrupts students' academic lives. Many students have to drop out of college due to limited funds or because they have to focus on finding income to cover the financial losses from illegal online loan exploitation. The terror, intimidation, threats, and violence experienced by students disrupt their mental and physical health. Students have to live in conditions without security for a long period of time when they become users of illegal online loans. Many students who are victims of illegal online loans suffer from mental disorders that interfere with their ability to live their lives. Long-term student recovery requires psychiatric care that takes a lot of effort, time, and money.

Critical Criminology, Special Issue Introduction: Critical Engagements with Gender, Race and Class in Crimmigration Controls

Critical Criminology, Special Issue Introduction: Critical Engagements with Gender, Race and Class in Crimmigration Controls

Exposure to harm as a function of bargaining position: The class composition of hospitality workers in Sheffield

This article advances a zemiological framework of work-based harms, as a means of interrogating the contemporary crisis in the quality of work. Such a framework provides a more nuanced conceptualisation and a stronger political framing of the various harms that are incurred in the workplace than alternative understandings. We critically appraise the development of zemiology out of critical criminology and review recent models which demonstrate the value and insights of the approach to the topic of work-based harms. Nonetheless, these accounts tend to neglect the role of worker resistance in determining the distribution of harm, and we draw on Class Composition Analysis from Autonomist Marxism as a way of better understanding the bargaining power of workers, which in our understanding is synonymous with their ability to resist the imposition of harm. We apply this combined framework to an analysis of hospitality work in Sheffield. First, we describe workers’ experiences of three significant forms of harm (employment insecurity, wage thefts and health and safety during the COVID pandemic). Second, we explore the barriers to union organisation, which very often are linked to the dynamics generating harms in the workplace. Finally, we examine how those barriers were overcome and harms effectively contested, drawing on the example of the Sheffield Needs A Pay Rise campaign.

Roma women serving community sentences in Italy: an analysis through the lens of Critical Criminology and Critical Romani Studies

ABSTRACT This article asserts that it can be analytically expedient to employ and combine aspects of Critical Criminology and Critical Romani Studies in research that analyses the relationship between Roma and the criminal justice system. The resulting approach focuses on criminalization and racialization processes and how they are intertwined, as well as on social construction of representations and on structural discrimination, which is analysed from an intersectional perspective. When applied to research into mothers serving community sentences in Italy, this analytical framework enabled us to highlight forms of discrimination that affect Roma women given non-custodial sentences and show how their relationship with the criminal justice system is influenced by the prevailing cultural constructs regarding gender and motherhood, as well as by racialization processes and class backgrounds.

تحلیل جامعه‌شناختی جزاهای بدیل حبس در حقوق کیفری افغانستان

Imprisonment is one of the criminal reactions, which is applied to establishment of social order and ensure justice. Alternative punishments of imprisonment were proposed as a result of the emergence of critical criminology theories in the 19th century and de-imprisonment theories. According to the theories of the abolitionist schools, the movements of de-imprisonment and international documents, the Afghan legislator has determined the alternative punishments of imprisonment as the main punishment in 2016. The novelty of the alternative punishment of imprisonment as the main punishment in the penal code and how it matches with the prevailing culture needs a research in this regard. The purpose of the research is to study the alternative punishments of imprisonment, its function in reforming the criminal and how it is accepted as a social phenomenon in the Afghan society. The question is, what is the function of alternative prison sentences from a sociological point of view? What is the feedback of alternative prison sentences in correction and rehabilitation of criminals? This research has been done in a descriptive-analytical way, using a library tool to collect data, in the criminal law of Afghanistan. The findings of the research are; The legislator has determined the alternative punishments of imprisonment for the first time in its modern form as the main punishment. As far as the alternative punishments of imprisonment have been implemented in the society, according to the punishment of imprisonment, it has played more effective roles in the part of reformingthe criminal. Chnging imprisonment to an alternative punishment during punishment shows the flexibility of the legislator regarding the criminals in order to provide the basis for their reformation. However, lack of strict monitoring of its implementation, lack of necessary tools and equipment for electronic monitoring, and lack of culturalizaion among judges to determine alternative punishments to imprisonment are among the problems in its implementation.

A Right to Know? Using Access to Information as Method in Critical Criminological Research

Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) requests are becoming an increasingly common method of qualitative inquiry, particularly for critical criminologists in Canada who face barriers in accessing Canadian prisons to conduct research. This article explores the politics of institutional gatekeeping and highlights the ongoing policing of critical criminological knowledge, necessitating the use of ATIP as a data collection method. Two case studies describe the strategies that the authors mobilized to acquire records from the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) when their applications to conduct research inside prisons were denied. The authors argue that while access to information legislation is promoted as allowing for increased accountability and transparency of the government, real transparency is a public myth. This lack of transparency is linked to the ascendancy of administrative criminology in Canada, which ultimately devalues critical research and inhibits information flows in and out of carceral spaces.

Editorial (Critical Criminology)

Editorial (Critical Criminology)

Introduction: The Criminalization-to-Deportation Pipeline in the United States—A Special Issue for Critical Criminology

Introduction: The Criminalization-to-Deportation Pipeline in the United States—A Special Issue for Critical Criminology

Towards a social harm approach in drug policy

In this paper, we explore how the social harm approach can be adapted within drug policy scholarship. Since the mid-2000s, a group of critical criminologists have moved beyond the concept of crime and criminology, towards the study of social harm. This turn proceeds decades of research that highlights the inequities within the criminal legal system, the formation of laws that protect the privileged and punish the disadvantaged, and the systemic challenge of the effectiveness of retribution and punishment at addressing harm in the community. The purpose of this paper is to first identify parallels between the social harm approach and critical drug scholarship, and second to advocate for the adoption of a social harm lens in drug policy scholarship. In the paper, we draw out the similarities between social harm and drug policy literatures, as well as outline what the study of social harm can bring to an analysis of drug policy. This includes a discussion on the ontology of drug crime, the myth of drug crime and the ineffective use of the crime control system in response to drug use. The paper then discusses how these conversations in critical criminology and critical drugs scholarship can be brought together to inform future drug policy research. This reflection details the link between social harm and the impingement of human flourishing, explores the role of decolonizing drug policy, advocates for the centralization of lived experience within the research process and outlines how this might align with harm reduction approaches. We conclude by arguing that the social harm approach challenges the idea that neutrality is the goal in drug policy and explicitly seeks to expand new avenues in activist research and social justice approaches to policymaking.

The ethics liberation and punitive power in peripheral countries

The research addressed Enrique Dussel's Ethics of Liberation in the era of globalization and social exclusion, using it as a framework for ethical considerations in a decolonial critique of the Eurocentric and North American standards that underpinned the domination of peripheral countries by central countries, including in criminological knowledge. Therefore, we explored decolonial knowledge, correlating it with critical criminology, resulting in the proposal of a decolonial criminology. The theoretical contributions, in conjunction with the Ethics of Liberation, were employed to foster a critical awareness of the use of punitive power as a means of maintaining the colonial matrix of domination and exploitation, especially within the field of criminology. In conclusion, we also presented the contribution of the Ethics of Liberation to a new configuration of punitive power, now employed in favor of vulnerable groups with the aim of eliminating or reducing their victimization within the current world system. However, it is crucial to note that the same Ethics of Liberation demands that the use of punitive power must not lead to new victims of exclusion or domination..

The experience of the camp Tiago Campin dos Santos in Rondônia in the light of critical criminology

The present work intends to briefly tell the history of repression and resistance of the Tiago Campin dos Santos Camp, located in the rural area of ​​Porto Velho/RO. The Camp, organized by the LCP (Liga dos Camponeses Pobres de Rondônia e Amazônia Occidental) has more than 700 families, who occupy the area, which in turn is public land illegally occupied by the biggest land grabber in the region, known as ''Old Rooster''. After systematically suffering several attacks from the State police forces, in fulfillment of illegal Repossessions, violations of rights were reported by local peasants, committed by police with gunslinger hired by the land grabber, which culminated in physical violence, psychological violence, destruction property, humiliations, evictions and murders. Since its formation, in 2020, 11 murders have already been recorded as a result of these reported attacks. Secondly, it is intended to use the example of the Camp to reflect on the system of control and penal selectivity that place an impoverished peasant mass under the ‘’sight’’ of the State, who struggles for democratic access to land. The repressive and classist character of the State and consequently of the Judiciary leads it to face a social problem, which is the poor distribution of land in Brazil, as a public security problem, individualizing the agents of this conflict, criminalizing them, intentionally suppressing the dimension social conflict. In the essence of the Maximum Penal State model, the management of poverty through the penal control system, especially through the selective and neutralizing use of prison, makes it unnecessary to discuss structural problems, such as the social ills generated by the capitalist system on the use of the land, heightened in the latifundist production model. The agrarian question starts to be colonized by the performance of penal control over “invaders” and, with very little frequency, over landowners, land grabbers, and gunslinger.

Resocializacijos įgyvendinimo problemos ir galimybės Lietuvos kalėjimuose

Lithuania‘s strategic documents point out that the main purpose of the execution of sentences is the resocialisation of convicts. The article analyses the problems and possibilities of the implementation of resocialisation of convicts in Lithuanian prisons today, based on the ideas of positivist and critical criminology. The research comprised an analysis of scientific literature and strategic documents in Lithuania, and an empirical qualitative study, which included twenty semistructured interviews with Lithuanian prison staff and experts from the penitentiary system. The data analysis was based on thematic analysis. The study reveals that resocialisation as a priority becomes a secondary goal of imprisonment during implementation, pursued in a demotivating and desocialising prison environment and punitive culture. The gap between the prison‘s stated objectives of resocialising prisoners and the human and financial capacity to achieve this is noted. Positivist and critical criminology ideas broaden the perception and analysis of resocialisation as a phenomenon and make it possible to rethink the functional and institutional distinction between the punishment of convicted persons and their treatment, assistance, and motivated personal transformation as different activities. The study suggests that the success of resocialisation of an individual requires the disaggregation and implementation of the stages of resocialisation, not only in prison but also in institutions that focus on helping without retribution and punishment.

Crime media as cinematic “freak show”: Ableism and speciesism in retelling Dahmer

Grounded in an analysis of the Netflix series Dahmer-Monster, this article offers a theory concerning mass consumption of crime drama. Refracted by scholarship on ableism and speciesism, I argue that Dahmer-Monster (and comparable shows) can be understood as mediated “freak show.” Crime drama offers images of “abnormality” that provide a surface upon which conceptions of normalcy can be (re)inscribed. Audiences are assured of their normality via this process. The article speaks to critical criminologists and critical disability studies scholarship. Consistent with nascent “crip criminology,” it suggests that there is much scope for further dialogue across these areas. As a cultural site, crime media is saturated by ableism, yet it has not been subject to much scrutiny by critical disabilities studies scholarship. And, while much criminological attention is devoted to cultural portrayals of crime, ableism and speciesism have not been central categories to such analyses. This article contributes to efforts to connect critical criminologies with scholarly interest in ableism and speciesism.

Ethnographic activism and critical criminology

Ethnographic activism and critical criminology

The Bologna-Barcelona axis between Criminal Law Dogmatics and Critical Sociology of punitive control. Hidden Continuities and Apparent Overcomings

This article aims to highlight the importance of the link between Bologna and Barcelona, consisting of an epistemic and methodological convergence in the approach to the criminal question and, in particular, to the problem of penal selectivity. If on the one hand this link cannot be eliminated, on the other it is exposed to a series of attempts at obfuscation by the dominant legal and criminological ideology, which is even reflected in autobiographical contingencies that add an anecdotal dimension to the discussion. At the same time, the recovery of this link imposes a reflection on the contemporary criminological debate, since the distinctive features of Italian-Iberophone critical criminology clash with some premises of the most recent and advanced trends in terms of critical potential, in particular the zemiological approach. One example is the role that criminal dogmatics plays within the sociological analysis of the penal system following Franco Bricola’s lesson, and the meaning of this methodological choice in terms of transdisciplinarity and political radicalism. Our conclusion is that a better coordination between critical traditions is needed: one that aims at overcoming linguistic barriers and starts with a systematic review of the existing critical arsenal before any headlong rush