Critical Criminology Research Articles

Juicios paralelos en Colombia y la imposibilidad de aplicar el principio de presunción de inocencia

The article is framed within the strategic studies of Political Science, Criminal Law and Critical Criminology from the perspective of Power Analysis and its application to trials through mass media and modelling of public opinion. The purpose of the article is to evidence how the use of that power leads to the performance of parallel trials that make impossible the acquittal of the suspect. It also shows how judicial errors are made, as well as the manner in which verdicts are conducted and justice is imparted in Colombia. It is also exposed how opinion journalism, investigative journalism, the power of public opinion, and the mediatization of trials have become an epicenter of pressure that force authorities of States to dismiss public servants, begin trials or establish research commissions that facilitate the access to justice for citizens and reduce impunity in cases that would not have legal consequences. It is concluded, that such a power leads sometimes to the performance of parallel trials that make imposible the application of the principle of presumption of innocence and the democratization of the trial.

Other neoliberal penalities: Marching Powder and prison tourism in La Paz

For Loïc Wacquant ‘neoliberal penality’ is epitomized by the ‘penal state’ in the USA. As a decentring of this assumption, this article examines the 2003 ‘cult’ memoir Marching Powder, Rusty Young and Thomas Mcfadden’s account of the five years that Mcfadden, a British cocaine smuggler, spent in San Pedro prison La Paz in the late 1990s, where he became famous for organizing ‘prison tours’ for foreign backpackers. Marching Powder offers a vision of the extreme end of neoliberal penal logic whereby Bolivia displaces the USA as the site of a possible neoliberal ‘extreme’ as San Pedro becomes a synecdoche for an alternative neoliberal penal order. Drawing on debates from critical criminology and tourism studies, I suggest that as the correlate of the prison tours which it continues to promote, Marching Powder feeds the touristic desire for the spectacle of punishment.

Uma Análise Crítica da Ocorrência de Prisões Preventivas na Lei Maria da Penha

Os movimentos feministas, visando ao empoderamento, alcançaram maior enrijecimento penal, o que resultou na criação da Lei Maria da Penha. O recrudescimento das penas abstratamente previstas legitima o objetivo do ordenamento jurídico, mas esta regra é inapropriada para os problemas domésticos e familiares, manifestando um simbolismo penal. O presente trabalho se propõe a evidenciar, sob a égide da Criminologia Crítica, a inadequação da quantidade de prisões preventivas aplicadas que vem sendo determinadas sob o manto de forma efetiva de resolução de conflitos domésticos. Para tanto, investigam-se as reais funções da referida lei no enfrentamento da criminalidade doméstica de gênero através da análise de processos-crimes sentenciados no ano de 2014 na I Vara de Violência Doméstica e Familiar do Recife.

Gendering Climate Change: A Feminist Criminological Perspective

Drawing on insights from feminist scholars and activists, this article examines the dialectical relationship between climate change and the social construction of gender. We examine in detail how gender inequalities associated with capitalism, particularly in its latest Neoliberal incarnation, help to produce global warming, as well as to produce gendered vulnerabilities and unequal impacts. After a brief review of past successes and failures to integrate gender concerns into climate change debates and policies, we suggest several criminological interventions that are compatible with a feminist perspective on climate change. We argue that a stronger criminological focus on the global political economy, particularly on the gendered inequalities it produces, is analytically essential for understanding both the etiology and harmful consequences of climate change. Simultaneously, we urge critical criminologists to employ the tools of our trade to take a more proactive role in the social construction of a just and sustainable society.

Critical Criminology and the Struggle Against Climate Change Ecocide

This article provides an outline for action against climate change ecocide. Critical criminology has primarily focussed on exposing the political economy surrounding global warming and the powerful interests that perpetuate harmful practices even in the light of overwhelming scientific evidence. Questions of activist intervention have been less forthcoming, although specific attention has been given to concepts such as ecocide to highlight the criminality and social and ecological injustices involved in “business as usual.” After discussing the nature and dynamics of the nation-state and global capitalism, the article then presents an action plan matrix that incorporates elements relating to law and legal reform, environmental law enforcement, courts and adjudication, and social action. The article argues for the necessity of greater integration of theory and practice through the development of a social praxis for climate change justice.

Joseph Donnermeyer and Walter DeKeseredy: Rural Criminology

In their book Rural Criminology, Joseph Donnermeyer and Walter DeKeseredy seek to fill a major gap in criminological research by devoting a plethora of empirical, theoretical and political attention to crimes, and societal reactions to them, in rural places. While this book is by no means the first to be published on the under examined topic of rural crime, it is among very few to be driven by critical criminological ways of knowing and understanding. Donnermeyer and DeKeseredy also draw on a much wider range of progressive empirical, theoretical, and political literature than the other rural criminology publications that deviate from mainstream or orthodox thinking. This is turn provides a much more comprehensive review of rural criminology than its predecessors and with it the ability to accelerate progress in this field, which up until now has been slow. In their own words Donnermeyer and DeKeseredy’s objective is ‘‘to show the utility of critical criminology for the study of rural crime, and how a critical approach can give scholarly consideration of rural crime a much greater significance, with many important implications that in turn can inform the general field of criminology and advance its theoretical development’’ (p. 2). The authors begin their book by challenging and exposing a number of commonly held assumptions about rural crime in chapter 1, Rural Crime: Myths and Realities. In doing so, Donnermeyer and DeKeseredy also go on to detail the many realities of rural crime. I am sure many readers will be surprised to hear that the rates of certain crimes, such as domestic and sexual violence, are much higher in some rural areas than they are in urban or suburban areas. In presenting this and other false dichotomies and common misconceptions, the authors highlight how little is known about rural crime and societal reactions to them within the broader criminological community, despite the plethora of criminological research available. They are also able to show how this lack of understanding has contributed to the perseverance of myths regarding rural crime and rural culture. Nevertheless, the authors highlight the strong role that critical criminology has played, and can continue

A POLÍCIA JUDICIÁRIA E O COMBATE À CRIMINALIDADE.

The Judicial Police conduct the criminal investigation through informal procedures and also through the bureau instruction of the Police Inquiry doing a sort of pre-procedural “guilt formation”. It is an inquisitional action of criminal public policy wich interferes with intimacy and freedom of people with a degree of selectiviness and discretion that must be demonstrated through a referential of critical criminology. The objective of this research is to see how it builds the agenda of this public safety program and if this police action combat or induces the criminality. Seeking an alternative compatible with the referential used, the study suggests the abolition of the current model concentrated in the Union and in the United and as a hypothesis model it is offered one decentralized county model. To this conclusion, it was analyzed the police culture, legal habitus, the existing discourse among its actors, inherited investigative practices of an etiological paradigm of criminology, the form of accountability that is exerted on the steps of the investigative procedure and the method used for the investigation of crimes.

Rebel Heart: Performing Fatness Wrong Online

Rebel Heart: Performing Fatness Wrong Online

Reimagining the Educational Field: Thoughts on a Critical Criminology of Education

Prompted by the need to expand the criminological enterprise, this paper makes a case for a critical criminology of education, one that takes a governance approach. It seeks to illustrate what such a criminology might entail by developing an analytic framework with which to analyze the educational field. The framework is put to use to provide an analytic discussion of Ontario education policy reformations concerning student discipline. Education was conceptualized by policymakers as an institution for disciplining and governing students, specifically through the concept of “bullying”. From this analysis, the paper suggests it is possible to theorize education as a “security apparatus”, one that is increasingly concerned with the governance of social (in)security and public safety. The discussion suggests that education is an important institution for governing by identifying one regulatory project that concerns student behavior both within and beyond the school. In so doing, the paper illustrates the creative process in developing a criminology of education, and the value of imaginative thinking within criminology.

Remembering Jock Young: Some Sociological and Personal Reflections

Jock Young intellectually, politically, and personally touched the lives of many people. Thus, it is not surprising that his departure from this world on November 16, 2013 generated much shock, disbelief, and sadness. This article offers some personal and sociological reflections on Jock’s many contributions to critical criminology.

Jock Young, Left Realism and Critical Victimology

In this paper I reflect upon the legacy of the work of Jock Young for the development of a critical criminology. In doing this I also endeavour to offer a contribution to an internal history of both criminology and victimology but from a very particular, and personal, position. The paper falls into four parts. In the first I consider the time period from 1980–1997 and academic, political and policy debates therein. I have called this a time of ‘emergent optimism’. The second part considers the years from 1997–2007 in which this optimism was subjected to challenge. The third part considers 2007 to date and the challenges that remain for both criminology and victimology in the absence of the voice of Jock Young.

The classlessness state of criminology and why criminology without class is rather meaningless

Criminology has returned to a stage of development where class is no longer seen as a relevant theoretical or empirical concern. This state of classless criminology reflects the decline in radical scholarship over the past two decades and the absence of radical/Marxist critiques of criminology. Despite the neglect of class by criminologists, class remains an important construct for understanding the main issues of concern within criminology: crime, the construction of law, and justice. This article reviews the neglect of class analysis in contemporary criminology, and draws examples of the ways in which class remains an important consideration in the contemporary world where the world economy of capitalism dominates economic, social and political relations globally. In reviewing the neglect of class, examples are provided of contemporary areas of criminological research where class based theory and empirical work could alter what we know about crime. While orthodox criminology has long neglected class, new forms of critical criminology that emerged since 1990 have also promoted the neglect of class analysis.

POLÍTICA PÚBLICA CARCERÁRIA:uma institucionalizada violação de direitos fundamentais impulsionada pela criminalização das drogas

Considered true medieval dungeons, prisons have served to deposit humans living in degrading conditions, violating the fundamental rights that go beyond the sentence imposed for crimes committed. The problem of chaotic Brazilian prison situation is driven daily by mass imprisonment and the social control of public policy resulting crackdown on illicit drugs. Comparing the theoretical framework of Critical Criminology with fundamental rights in the Constitution of 1988, at its core human dignity, and employing the deductive method, the study aims to highlight the institutionalized violation of fundamental rights by prison policy through social control incident selectively on individuals belonging to disadvantaged or vulnerable classes. The conclusion of the research is that there is no denying the failure of the state and the connivance of supervisory public institutions in the situation surrounding the prison system, compared to the revelations in violation of different fundamental rights, such as torture, starvation, mistreatment, overcrowding, sexual abuse, death, among others, as a form of social control of vulnerable classes.

Confronting neoliberal penality: Placing prison reform and critical criminology at the core of social work's social justice agenda

Summary Social work practitioners and educators should be more attentive to the expansion of the penal estate occurring across a number of jurisdictions. The article presents an overview of the crisis in prisons within one European state, the Republic of Ireland. Findings Relying on official sources and critical commentaries on those sources, six factors are highlighted: the growth in prisoner numbers; the cost of imprisonment; ‘inhuman and degrading’ conditions prisoners are subjected to; particular hardships faced by specific groups of detainees; the changing role of probation services; the lack of robust, independent inspection mechanisms. Application The value base of the profession and its commitment to the promotion of social justice could prompt social workers to become better informed about the growth of the penal estate and more intent on campaigning for better conditions for prisoners and their families and less reliance on incarceration.

CULTURAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF CRITICAL CRIMINOLOGY

This article discusses aspects of cultural criminology that are a continuation of the critical tradition on one hand and aspects that constitute qualitatively new insights on the other. Cultural criminology emerged in the 1990s as a branch of criminology building on the heritage of critical criminology and adapting it to changing social and political conditions. In attempting to respond to the analytical and ideological crisis in critical criminology, cultural criminologists have adapted new concepts (such as transgression and edgework), found new methods for researching liquid and complex phenomena, and engaged in activism to counter processes of othering in the public sphere. Cultural criminology focuses on several major problems: the tensions of late modernity in interactions between individuals and groups negotiating norms by and in upholding or breaking them; the presentation and reification of crime in the media; the spatial analysis of power relations. The article argues that the main focus of the field is understanding (Verstehen), based on the principle of sensitive criminological understanding, and enabling a discussion of multiple normativity and a praxis–oriented application of knowledge.

Pagando penas y ganando el cielo. Vida cotidiana de las reclusas de la cárcel El Buen Pastor 1890-1929

La cárcel del Buen Pastor de Bogotá durante el período de hegemonía conservadora ilustra la política penitenciaria y los dispositivos formales e informales del control social de la época reunidos en una misma institución. En un intento de reconstruir la historia institucional, en el presente artículo se muestran las prácticas cotidianas del encierro penitenciario femenino a partir de un diálogo entre el institucionalismo y la criminología crítica en donde la normatividad penal, la religión y el control social convergen en un mismo escenario y con el mismo objetivo, frenar la criminalidad.

Mídia noticiosa, crime e violência: Discussões teóricas

This paper aims to theoretically discuss the news construction on crime and violence, from perspectives drawn from social communication, critical criminology and social sciences. The works discussed intersect at various times to observe and contribute to, for example, the construction of meaning related to the ideas of social control, risk of victimization by violence and insecurity, and problematize the issue of coercive forces as primary defining news on violence and the media as an executive agency of the penal system, capable of moving speeches of violence, a concept of Roberto Da Matta, who divides them into two types: classical and common sense, both being present in the news media, although fulfilling different roles. This text is part of larger monograph, whose title Journalism, Risk and Insecurity: An analysis of discourses on illicit drugs in the newspaper Zero Hora and Correio do Povo.

Jock Young and the Criminological Imagination as a Life Force

The work of the incomparable Jock Young has had an enormous impact on the development of critical criminology and of criminology more generally. In this important volume I discuss the impact of his latter works (principally his trilogy) on the development of my own research in subfields that have become virtual industries in the global praxes of contemporary criminal (in)justice: gangs and deportation. I draw on my extensive experience with ethnographic fieldwork and the resulting analyses to show how major themes in Young’s work have been used to illuminate complex social processes and provide much-needed alternative theoretical frameworks with which to disentangle our data. I conclude that his radical oeuvre as well as his example of the socially engaged social scientist offer us a way out of the impasse we now face.

Intersectionality, Rural Criminology, and Re-imaging the Boundaries of Critical Criminology

One of the significant shortcomings of the criminological canon, including its critical strands—feminist, cultural and green—has been its urbancentric bias. In this theoretical model, rural communities are idealised as conforming to the typical small-scale traditional societies based on cohesive organic forms of solidarity and close density acquaintance networks. This article challenges the myth that rural communities are relatively crime free places of ‘moral virtue’ with no need for a closer scrutiny of rural context, rural places, and rural peoples about crime and other social problems. This challenge is likewise woven into the conceptual and empirical narratives of the other articles in this Special Edition, which we argue constitute an important body of innovative work, not just for reinvigorating debates in rural criminology, but also critical criminology. For without a critical perspective of place, the realities of context are too easily overlooked. A new criminology of crime and place will help keep both critical criminology and rural criminology firmly anchored in both the sociological and the criminological imagination. We argue that intersectionality, a framework that resists privileging any particular social structural category of analysis, but is cognisant of the power effects of colonialism, class, race and gender, can provide the theoretical scaffolding to further develop such a project.

Energy Crime, Harm, and Problematic State Response in Colorado: A Case of the Fox Guarding the Hen House?

Crime related to energy extraction is an emerging area of interest among green and critical criminologists. This paper contributes to that developing work by examining the political economy of harm and crime associated with the oil and natural gas industry in rural Colorado. Specifically, we examine problematic state regulatory response to citizens’ complaints regarding a range of harms caused by private industry (e.g., water pollution, adverse human health consequences, and domestic livestock death). In this paper, we draw on content analysis of formal complaints filed by citizens to the state, ethnographic work, and intensive interviews with citizens seeking relief from problematic or abusive industry practices. Our analysis illuminates how the state documents these practices, how citizens experience them, and how the state dilutes and deflects the externalities of energy extraction to produce additional harm.