Critical Criminology Research Articles

Criminology against war

Following the armed conflict in the former Yugoslavia, a new criminology of war developed, producing fresh insights and opening up original research streams. The incorporation of war within the remit of criminological analysis, advocated by classical as well as critical criminology, rapidly gained new momentum. The focus on asymmetrical conflicts and invasions unveiled the massive killing of civilians, bringing war into the arena of victimology. Moreover, the examination of the material forces that drive international conflicts situated such conflicts among the violent predatory offences that concern most criminological theories. The study of ‘war crimes’, ultimately, led some authors to shift attention towards ‘war as crime’. After briefly summarising the developments that shaped a criminology of war, this paper attempts further analytical steps towards the formulation of a criminology against war. A critique of the concept of ‘just wars’ is followed by the examination of the ambiguities that cloud the notions of jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Current legal provisions regulating international conflict are described as blank norms, while principles of peacebuilding are finally pinpointed.

Creating convict criminology in the UK: a response to Aresti, Darke and Ross from members of the British Convict Criminology group

Responding to an earlier article (Aresti et al, 2023) by two scholars involved in convict criminology at Westminster University and a third from the US, this article mounts a defence of the British Convict Criminology group against the analysis and conclusions of the first article. We argue that convict criminology is diverse and needs to embrace different approaches that correspond to national circumstances, both in prisons and universities. We suggest that far from stagnating, convict criminology in the UK is beginning to thrive and has much to offer critical criminology. This offer is strengthened by adopting critical and convivial academic practice supportive of people’s various efforts and experiences in British prisons and British universities. Our article offers a critical engagement with issues of nomenclature, convictism and coloniality which we believe will be important for an inclusive convict criminology for the future.

Examining U.S. school shootings as state crimes of omission

ABSTRACT The argument presented in this paper is that the failure of the United States federal government to enact adequate gun control laws that would help prevent school shootings is a state crime by omission. Drawing on international law, as critical criminologists have recommended since the 1970s, the paper shows that the federal government is failing to act when it has a duty to protect schoolchildren. The paper concludes with recommendations for federal gun control.

Značaj pojma intersekcionalnosti za socijalnu patologiju: epistemološki i metodološki aspekti

The aim of the paper is to consider the importance of intersectionality as an innovative theoretical and methodological tool for conceptualizing the social differences in the field of social pathology. In order to realize the goal set, we first approach the definition of intersectionality and its delimitation in relation to related concepts, while clarifying our own understanding of the concept, which we base on material directions within the approach of diversity politics and critical race theory. Unlike modern sociological understandings, contemporary studies of social differences theoretically rely on more complex approaches, such as constructivist interactionism, phenomenology, post-Marxism, gender studies, postcolonial studies, and critical theories of society, which focus on identity and subjectivity. The materialistic aspect of the critical approach and issues related to policies of distribution are mostly neglected, amid the dominance of the postmodernist culture of thinking, which often manifests itself as imprecise and unfounded. The initial impulse for writing this paper is precisely the effort to reanimate that repressed, material dimension. Then, the paper shows the advantages of using the intersectional approach in the research of critical analysis of public policies and critical criminology, so that the focus in the final part of the paper is directed to specific methodological topics and problems in the study of which the concept of intersectionality has proven to be important and necessary.

‘Fillin The Fridge’: The Transition from Individualistic to Caring Values in Imprisoned Chilean Men

Chile is often considered an exceptional country regarding neoliberalism. Since its installation, neoliberalism has found roots in different dimensions of Chilean social reality, not only in the politico-economic sphere but, more importantly for the present work, in the cultural realm. Several Chilean sociologists theorize about cultural values and practices, suggesting consumerism as a by-product of neoliberal reforms and pointing to individualistic derivatives such as narcissism and hedonism. Which, in turn, are often associated with offending by critical criminologies. Drawing on the classical Mertonian standpoint and its revision through cultural criminology, this article explores individualistic values in marginalized Chileans, presenting accounts of imprisoned young men collected through semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest that new gender roles support the transition from individualistic values to caring purposes, and in describing the latter, this article also highlights the interplay of material and ontological deprivation as subject of exploration for current critical criminology.

History as activism: critical uses of history at the Berkeley School of Criminology in the 1970s

Works of historical criminology do not have to be disinterested studies of past crime-related phenomena. Instead, they can represent practical attempts to intervene in the politics of crime and justice in the present. This article takes this claim to a critical conclusion; historical research in criminology can function as a weapon in contemporary political struggles and a way of injecting radical politics into criminological studies. To demonstrate this point, the article scrutinises the ways in which early critical criminologists in the US engaged in historical research as a way of doing politics and activism. To such criminologists, doing historical research was a form of praxis. Focusing on the works produced at the Berkeley School of Criminology in the 1970s, the article shows that the nurture of a historical interest was deemed to be a vital step in the development of a critical paradigm within American criminology.

Introduction to the Special Issue in the Journal of Critical Criminology Mapping Covid Nonconformities

Introduction to the Special Issue in the Journal of Critical Criminology Mapping Covid Nonconformities

The social perception of environmental victimization. A visual and sensory methodological proposal

This article proposes a visual and sensory methodology useful to the study of environmental victimization from the perspective of people exposed to environmental harm and crime. Given the scarcity of tools with which to approach these dynamic and elusive phenomena, I focus first on the methodological and theoretical positioning that sees the encounter between green, cultural, visual, narrative and critical criminologies. Second, I discuss photo elicitation, a technique for a green criminology “with” images, where visual images are used as a heuristic tool in order to explore more thoroughly the social perception of environmental victimization. Third, I discuss the importance of sensory techniques for a green criminology open to the complex and situational dimension of environmental harm, with some examples involving a special form of mobile methodology called itinerant soliloquy. The conclusion notes the potential of a visual and sensory mode of research to social and environmental harms in sensitizing scholars, practitioners and policy-makers to the need to change some taken-for-granted views that inform our relationship with the environment.

Reawakening criminology: the importance of scientific method and inquiry in policing practice

PurposeCriminology both as a field of study and as a practice draws on a broad range of disciplines from the social, behavioural, human, natural and medical sciences. However, over recent times, the natural and medical sciences have been dismissed, overlooked and even ridiculed, largely since the rise of critical criminology and related contemporary conflict and social harm approaches from the 1960s onwards. This has led to a chasm emerging between the study of criminology and the practice of criminology such as within a policing context. This paper aims to provide a review of an emerging forensic biological method, that of neuroscience, within a criminological context, to illustrate the importance of criminology embracing and reawakening its natural and medical science roots.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on a conceptual design to realign criminology with the full range of disciplines used to inform its theory and application.FindingsThrough illustrating the role of forensic neuroscience, the paper reawakens the scientific method and inquiry of criminology reflecting the importance of the discipline being, and remaining, multi- and trans-disciplinary in nature. The paper, while reflecting on the limitations of scientific method and inquiry, outlines the strengths this approach to criminology engenders, promoting and delivering a scientific-based research agenda that aims to support industry partners in the prevention, disruption and reduction of crime, disorder and threats to public security.Practical implicationsFirstly, it is important for criminology as a field of study to (re)engage with its scientific method and inquiry. Secondly, criminology, by engaging in robust scientific method and inquiry, has a significant contribution to make to professional practice and the work of industry professionals. Thirdly, while there are limitations to such scientific method and inquiry, it should not lead to this component of criminology being discarded. Fourthly, there is a need for contemporary research in the area of scientific method and inquiry and its application to criminological contexts, including that of police practice. Finally, by engaging in scientific method and inquiry that is evidence based, a chasm between the field of study and the practice associated with criminology can be addressed.Originality/valueThis paper addresses the gap between criminology as a field of study and as a practice by reengaging with scientific method and inquiry, illustrating the need and value of criminology being and remaining multi- and trans-disciplinary, ensuring professions underpinned by criminology are supported in their practice.

The capitalization of crime in the city of real estate

This article explores how the relationship between crime and property values is reshaped by the transformation of houses into investible assets. Departing from neoclassical economics of crime, we introduce the notion of “capitalization of crime” to illustrate how crime is utilized to generate forward-looking financial expectations and shape housing markets in gentrifying neighborhoods. The study, based in Haifa, Israel, combines quantitative and qualitative data to demonstrate how investors and renters each play a role in constructing the value of crime by capitalizing crime in opposite directions. First, using a geographic information system to map crime alongside real-estate prices, we show that the effect of crime on property values is offset by prospects of future gentrification, thereby contributing to housing speculation. Second, using digital ethnography, we show how renters use “crime” to dampen investor expectations, reduce rents, and delay their displacement. Thus, our study adds to the established body of critical criminology, which examines the manipulation of crime for economic and political gains. It further contributes to emergent debates in urban criminology by explicating how the financialization of rental housing is remaking urban politics of crime and criminalization.

The emergence of critical criminology in Argentina’s law schools

A discipline takes on the contours of its context. Therefore, the sociology of science asks in what context science occurs and what implications it has for scientific findings. Worldwide, criminology exists as an independent science linked to sociology or law. What determines the dependency or independency of criminology? In this article, through archival research, I explore the emergence of critical criminology in Argentina. My goal is to explain why it emerged among scholars and practitioners of law, and I propose five reasons for this. All these reasons have as a background the fact that law in Argentina is, at least it was in the 1970s and 80s when critical criminology emerged, more sensitive to cultural, geographical, and historical-critical (and generalist) developments than social and behavioural sciences.

Methodological perspectives in Brazilian critical criminology: foundational guidelines and the mapping of its sources

This research, part of a broader exploration of the sources of current Brazilian critical criminology, aims to map the canonical works in the field, especially the publications and research of the 1970s, in order to identify theoretical guidelines, methodological perspectives, and to which extent there is an alignment with the debate of the Global North. This exploration seeks to identify (a) the theoretical perspectives, (b) the empirical emphasis, (c) how gender and race issues were faced, and (d) whether the boundaries between criminology and criminal law were delimited in the general framework of criminal sciences. The conclusion presents a synthesis of the foundational methodological guidelines and the present state of critical criminology in Brazil.

Autobiographical note on the development of critical criminology in Latin America

Autobiographical note on the development of critical criminology in Latin America

For a ‘marginal criminological realism’: Zaffaroni and the birth of a critical perspective on the criminal question from the Global South

In this paper we address how in the birth of critical criminology in Latin America, one of its key architects, Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni, poses in detail a problematisation that has acquired a very great centrality in the current debate: the hierarchy, asymmetry and dependency between the Global North and the Global South in the production of criminological knowledge, and offers ways to challenge the reproduction of this dynamic as a long-term phenomenon. His theoretical and political position in the 1980s, defined as a ‘marginal criminological realism’, anticipates a series of revealing points that we rediscover in the contemporary discussion. In this way, this paper seeks to avoid falling into an ‘amnesia’ by revitalising the historical exploration of the critical perspectives on the criminal question. In this exploration, we identify what constitutes, from our point of view, a firm foundation on which to build our own critical work from both a scientific and political point of view in Latin America and, more generally, in peripheral, marginal contexts.

O IMPACTO DA SELETIVIDADE PENAL NA LEI DE DROGAS

This article used the theoretical foundation, making use of an existentialist tendency of a basic nature, based on critical criminology through an integrative bibliographic review for data collection, using the analytical-synthetic and deductive logic as a procedure, the analysis of information was carried out by analogies , perceptions, studies of articles and judgments about the subject, comparison between scholars, and the study of research and facts. The objective of this analysis was to address the reason why the drug law and its recent changes had as its main result the exacerbated overcrowding of low-income people in Brazilian prisons, taking into account all the flaws in the norm related to drugs and identifying the legal consequence of criminal subjectivity on this topic. It is necessary to understand that selectivity does not arise from the moment the subject is detained, but from the moment he is born, depending on his social conditions, as if he were condemned only for living in a territory seen as dangerous or simply by the color of your skin. With the new drug law, being considered a dealer or a simple user has to do primarily with the individual's social origin: if he has financial conditions, has a renowned profession and lives in some central neighborhood of the capitals, he will hardly be considered a drug dealer. With the formation of stereotypes, the figure of the drug dealer is built, which will matter in his qualification as a user or dealer at a later time. Therefore, this discussion is, in fact, very important, as there are several implicit issues when it comes to drug trafficking, as the legislator did not bother to detail the specific amount of drugs to be applied to art 28 (user) or art 33 (trafficker), there is no apparatus in the law that presents objective criteria to differentiate the figure of the trafficker from that of the user, causing this arbitrariness in Law nº 11.343/2006 to have irreversible impacts on Brazilian society.

Critical criminology and Social Work ethical principles: an approach to their interlocution

Resumo: Este artigo objetiva trazer a importância da criminologia crítica como subsídio ao trabalho e à formação profissional, apresentando seus fundamentos numa análise marxista, levando em consideração a classe, a raça e o gênero, e sua possível interlocução com os princípios éticos do Serviço Social, vislumbrando uma aproximação maior com essa perspectiva na luta anticapitalista, antirracista, feminista e antipunitivista.

Analysis of the critical criminology of Zaffaroni in the treatment of legal alienation by peruvian criminal law

El presente artículo realiza un análisis de la criminología crítica planteada por Eugenio Zaffaroni y su relación con el concepto de alienación legal desarrollado por Roberto Gargarella y Antony Duff. Asimismo, se realiza el análisis de la normativa penal peruana y sus criterios de determinación de la pena, dentro de los cuales se ha previsto considerar el contexto de carencias sociales que pueda haber sufrido el delincuente.

Feminisms in the challenge of alternatives to punitivism: The necessary synergies in a path to be explored

In this text, after focusing the analysis on the incidence of patriarchy in law, we want to trace the basic defining lines of the three currents of feminism that can be differentiated in relation to penal issues: prison feminism, feminist guaranteeism and anti-punitive feminism. Secondly, starting from this last thesis, some key arguments will be developed to deepen in the development of a feminism attentive to the dangers of punitive logic, the creation of frameworks that move away from punitivism as an expression of patriarchy and approach other strategies. On this path, synergies with critical criminology, restorative justice and penal guaranty are necessary.

The Construction of Lithuanian Prison Sentence Assumptions in Critical Criminology Perspective: an Analysis of the Goals of Imprisonment

The declared aims of custodial sentencing worldwide and in Lithuania are to protect society from crime and reduce recidivism; it is agreed that these aims can be achieved only when the duration of imprisonment is devoted to the prisoner’s gradual return to society (UNODC 2015). However, the newest Lithuanian strategic documents note that the sentencing system does not promote the change of prisoners’ criminal habits, offender resocialization is fragmented, and prison staff carries out offender protection and surveillance, not resocialization and social help (LR Vyriausybė 2021b). By building upon the ideas of social constructionism tradition (Berger and Luckmann 1999) and critical criminology (Christie 1999; Hulsman 1997; Quinney 2004; Mathiesen 2006), this paper analyzes the aims of custodial sentencing in the context of Lithuanian penal system’s reform and specifies possible implementational problems of declared aims of imprisonment. Document analysis showed that the raising and naming of imprisonment problems are conditioned by the commitment to international organizations and projects, as well as the cascading aims of the Lithuanian political agenda. In Lithuania, the purposes of custodial sentencing continue to be relatively general and instrumental. They are used to justify current and future means of reform while it is expected of correctional facilities to provide long-term positive influences on a person and fulfill quantitative indicators. We presume that resocialization and social integration ideas, as the main declared aim of custodial sentencing, are “imprisoned” in political discourse, which lacks critical analysis and does not provide much chance for success.

Watchmen: critical criminology and biopolitical semantics

ABSTRACT The paper attempts to critically examine Allan Moore’s Watchmen in terms of its elements that could be utilised for critical power thinking and the critique of fanatic and/or apolitical self-proclaimed saviours of society. The first part of the paper attempts to read Rorschach through the prism of critical criminology, as he represents the novel’s most distinct expression of revenge and retribution, which, eventually, is linked to fascist-like practices. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the reading of Veidt’s macabre plan and his set of advice for self-care in terms of a twofold biopolitical strategy that entails both the thanatopolitical effect of killing millions for the sake of life itself and preaching the need for the latter’s optimisation to achieve individual and collective happiness. In the end, Watchmen is a ‘superhero neo-noir’ critique to both worldviews, since its point of departure is the critique of superheroes overall, as ‘nothing works’ and therefore ‘nothing ever ends’ if the structural reasons behind unfairness and oppression remain untouched.