Queer Criminology as Activism

Belknap’s recent call for greater criminological activism in the service of social justice identifies queer criminology as an important site for such activism. Indeed, much of the work undertaken by queer criminologists is already motivated by a concern to address a variety of injustices—whether in the form of discrimination, heteronormativity, gender binarism, or invisibility—experienced by queer communities in the realm of criminal justice, criminology, and beyond. In this paper, I explore the existing and possible future connections between queer criminology and activism. I highlight the ways in which queer politics have always involved social activism, including activism relating to criminal justice issues. I then suggest some possible directions for expanding queer criminological activism within the traditional academic roles of research, teaching, and service. Pursuing such directions, I argue, is necessary in order to set the foundation for further queer criminological activism beyond academia.     

Seeing War as Criminal: Peace Activist Views and Critical Criminology

A hallmark of critical criminology is its critique of the traditional definition of crime. For decades, critical scholars have proposed humanistic definitions of crime that bring state violence into the purview of academic criminology—although outside of critical criminology this is a matter of great contentiousness. This study investigates the views of those involved in peace activism, but not in any way associated with academic criminology, about the application of the term ‘crime’ to war, specifically the recent US war on Iraq. Given that there is no existing research on this subject, the article also examines how peace activists define crime generally and whether they believe those responsible for the war should be regarded as war criminals. Not surprisingly, semi‐structured interviews with 13 anti‐war activists reveal significant support for elements of critical criminological definitions of crime but an unexpected concern on the part of some that the application of the term ‘crime’ to war could be counterproductive in efforts to stop state violence. The rationales for this concern, as well as those for other issues addressed in the study, are largely presented in the interviewees’ own words.     

Peacemaking Criminology

This is an overview of the work of criminologists that informs how people build trust, safe and social security in the face of violent social differences. The article begins with a story of how the term “peacemaking” came to “criminology.” A theory of peacemaking emerging from this beginning is then stated, including a review of criminological literature that informs the theory. The theory is grounded in a paradigmatic departure from criminology’s tradition—the study of crime and criminality—to proposing instead of studying what replaces human separation with cooperation and mutual trust. This paradigm implies that stories of dispute handling are its most authoritative data, especially stories people tell about their own relations. It also implies new ways of evaluating the fruits of adopting a peacemaking paradigm for learning and living.     

Critical Criminology, Existential Humanism, and Social Justice: Exploring the Contours of Conceptual Integration

The relationship between critical criminology and social justice has been well documented, but efforts to provide a unified theory of social justice that cuts across and embodies the various strains of critical criminological thought have not been systematically researched. One useful approach for engaging in such a project comes from existential humanism, which draws attention to a number of life themes (e.g., the struggle to be free, being and becoming, redemption) and is compatible with critical criminology's commitment to radical social change. This article provisionally explores the boundaries of theoretical synthesis, mindful of those complex (and thorny) issues upon which successful conceptual integration depends, including definitions, assumptions, domains of inquiry, and modes of integration. This discussion concludes with an outline of the implications of a commentary for the future of critical criminology and for sustainable, meaningful praxis. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Cultural Criminology and the Politics of Meaning

Cultural criminology focuses on situational, subcultural, and mediated constructions of meaning around issues of crime and crime control. In this sense cultural criminology is designed for critical engagement with the politics of meaning, and for critical intervention into those politics. Yet the broader enterprise of critical criminology engages with the politics of meaning as well; in confronting the power relations of justice and injustice, critical criminologists of all sorts investigate the social and cultural processes by which situations are defined, groups are categorized, and human consequences are understood. The divergence between cultural criminology and other critical criminologies, then, may be defined less by meaning than by the degree of methodological militancy with which meaning is pursued. In any case, this shared concern with the politics of meaning suggests a number of innovations and interventions that cultural criminologists and other critical criminologists might explore.     

COERCION,SOCIAL SUPPORT,AND CRIME: AN EMERGING THEORETICAL CONSENSUS*

Two themes, coercion and social support, have emerged over the past two decades in criminology that can be used to build a new integrated theory of crime. The authors provide a review of recent theoretical developments in criminology to demonstrate that two interconnected themes provide the basis for a new consensus in theory and crime policy. With some important exceptions, coercion causes crime and social support prevents crime. The authors develop a theory of differential social support and coercion that integrates concepts from a broad range of criminological theories. Implications of this integrated theory for public policy are explored.     

The Ecological Distribution of Community Advantage and Disadvantage: Power Structures,Political Economy,Communities, and Green-State Crime and Justice

Certain forms of criminology such as social disorganization theory examine how community characteristics influence crime. That approach, however glosses over the fact that the distribution of community advantages and disadvantages (CAD) has structural origins, and that the distribution of CAD is also an indicator of the kinds of social, economic and ecological injustice communities face. Building on observations recently made by Moloney and Chambliss concerning the integration of state and green criminological research, this article explores the structural origins of CAD, how taking a political economic view of CAD relates to the distribution of crime and injustice in communities, and how a CAD approach promotes the integration of state crime, radical criminological and green criminological research.     

What’s Wrong with Penal Populism? Politics,the Public,and Criminological Expertise

This article discusses “penal populism” and its conflict with criminological expertise. It considers the proper balance between professional expertise and community sentiment in the formulation of crime control and penal policy—especially in respect of policy measures where moral rather than instrumental considerations are involved. It raises theoretical questions about the nature of “public opinion”—does it exist other than as an artifact of survey instruments?—and its proper role in a democratic polity. And it considers the professional responsibility of criminological experts in relation to policy formation and political debate. The performance of public health experts during the COVID pandemic is presented as an instructive case in point. Can criminology establish itself as a credible form of social scientific knowledge worthy of public trust? And how should criminologists comport themselves when engaging with questions of public policy and political controversy?

     

Intersectional Criminology: Interrogating Identity and Power in Criminological Research and Theory

Intersectional criminology is a theoretical approach that necessitates a critical reflection on the impact of interconnected identities and statuses of individuals and groups in relation to their experiences with crime, the social control of crime, and any crime-related issues. This approach is grounded in intersectionality, a concept developed from the tenets of women of color feminist theory and activism. To demonstrate how intersectionality is useful in criminology, this article reviews a sampling of feminist and critical research conducted on Black girls’ and women’s experiences with crime, victimization, and criminal legal system processes. This research demonstrates the interlaced social impacts of race, gender, femininity/masculinity ideals, sexuality, and socioeconomic class. This article also provides a basis for widely deploying an intersectional approach throughout the field of criminology across all social identities and statuses.     

Social support as an organizing concept for criminology: Presidential address to the academy of criminal justice sciences

Although “social support” is present as a theme in many criminological writings, it has not been identified explicitly as a concept capable of organizing theory and research in criminology. Drawing on existing criminological and related writings, this address derives a series of propositions that form the foundation, in a preliminary way, for the “social support paradigm” of the study of crime and control. The overriding contention is that whether social support is delivered through government social programs, communities, social networks, families, interpersonal relations, or agents of the criminal justice system, it reduces criminal involvement. Further, I contend that insofar as the social support paradigm proves to be “Good Criminology”—establishing that nonsupportive policies and conditions are criminogenic—it can provide grounds for creating a more supportive, “Good Society.”     

犯罪学与刑事法制改革:以英国为例

过去30年英国的犯罪学发展具有两个明显特征:一个是"犯罪学"在多个维度的"膨胀";另一个是犯罪学"自治性"的增强。犯罪学在向自治学科转变的过程中既具有许多有益的方面,也存在诸多风险。它可能会丧失与其他学科之间的联系,也越来越容易受到外部环境的影响与制约,因而有必要对其存在的问题及其潜在的后果保持警觉。犯罪学知识的用途,在于为决策的制定提供科学依据。对犯罪学进行准确定位有两个核心要求:一是要承诺把犯罪学变成一个内涵广阔的学术概念,即将犯罪学的多元主义看作一个优势;二是要让犯罪学研究与实践保持长久的、基本的联系,将犯罪学知识渗入公众关注的犯罪和法制事件中,对"制度性环境"作出一个比现在更令人信服的解释。     

About the authors

We have reached what may be an important turning point in the development of criminological thought and of social policy toward crime. The “conservative revolution” in criminology has lost considerable credibility, along with the entire set of minimalist strategies toward the disadvantaged that dominated social policy throughout much of the recent past. A space has opened for the development of a “social environmental” or “human-ecological” approach to crime, which combines a variety of interventions on the individual and family level with an array of broader policies aimed at controlling the social and economic forces that place individuals, families, and communities at risk in the first place.     

Sexual Violence Against Women Through the Lens of Environmental Criminology: Toward the Accumulation of Evidence-based Knowledge and Crime Prevention

Sexual violence against women is a serious problem worldwide. In this study, we organize and critically review previous empirical studies on sexual offenses against women through the lens of environmental criminology. For this purpose, we use the questions asked by environmental criminologists/crime analysts in the study of crime events; that is the: who, what, where, when, and how this phenomenon typically occurs. Based on the current state of the criminological research literature, we then provide a discussion on the prevention of sexual offenses against women drawing on a situational crime prevention framework. By engaging in this exercise, we argue that environmental criminology can substantially contribute to understanding and informing prevention practices in the field of sexual offenses against women.     

Making Genocide Unthinkable: Three Guidelines for a Critical Criminology of Genocide

Through a critical examination of some of the prevailing arguments for establishing a criminology of genocide, this paper seeks to demonstrate the limitations of mainstream criminological frameworks for understanding genocide. Moreover, it argues that, if we are to move beyond a mechanical application of the criminological canon to this thus far understudied area of criminal behaviour, we must develop a critical and reflexive criminological approach to the topic of genocide. In this manner, the analysis presented here follows in the footsteps of Bauman [Bauman (1989). Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press] by asking: what can genocide teach us about criminology? In addressing this question, three guidelines for a future criminology of genocide are proposed. Briefly put, a criminology of genocide should be: (1) reflexive and non-redemptive; (2) ‘undisciplined’ and critical; and, (3) responsible.     

SOMATOTYPING,ANTIMODERNISM, AND THE PRODUCTION OF CRIMINOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE*

This study analyzes the work of William H. Sheldon, the psychologist, physician, and advocate of the study of body types. It investigates how he arrived at his much‐repeated finding that a correlation exists between mesomorphy (a stocky, muscular body build) and delinquency and how his ideas were validated and perpetuated. It reviews what Sheldon actually said about the causes of crime; identifies his goals in searching for a relationship between body shape and criminality; explains how he found audiences for his biological theory at a time when sociological approaches dominated criminology; and attempts to understand the current criminological ambivalence about the scientific status of Sheldon's work, despite its discreditation decades ago. I argue that the tripartite structure of Sheldon's thought attracted three different audiences–methodologists, social scientists, and supporters–and that it encouraged the supporters to fund his research without reference to the critiques of the social scientists. I also argue that somatotyping was part of a broader antimodernist reaction within international scientific communities against the dislocations of twentieth‐century life. To understand the origins, acceptance, and maintenance of criminological ideas, we need a historical perspective on figures of the past. Positivism may inform us about what is true and false, but we also need to know how truth and falsity have been constructed over time and how the ideas of earlier criminologists were shaped by their personal and social contexts.     

Public criminologies

Research Summary Public scholarship aspires to bring social science home to the individuals, communities, and institutions that are its focus of study. In particular, it seeks to narrow the yawning gap between public perceptions and the best available scientific evidence on issues of public concern. Yet nowhere is the gap between perceptions and evidence greater than in the study of crime. Here, we outline the prospects for a public criminology, conducting and disseminating research on crime, law, and deviance in dialogue with affected communities. We present historical data on the media discussion of criminology and sociology, and we outline the distinctive features of criminology—interdisciplinary, a subject matter that incites moral panics, and a practitioner base actively engaged in knowledge production—that push the boundaries of public scholarship. Policy Implications Discussions of public sociology have drawn a bright line separating policy work from professional, critical, and public scholarship. As the research and policy essays published in Criminology & Public Policy make clear, however, the best criminology often is conducted at the intersection of these domains. A vibrant public criminology will help to bring new voices to policy discussions while addressing common myths and misconceptions about crime.     

Talking Heads and Bleeding Hearts: Newsmaking, Emotion and Public Criminology in the Wake of a Sexual Assault

Using our own experiences in attempting to ‘do’ public criminology in the wake of a violent sexual assault on our campus, we offer a critique of the emerging public criminology framework. Focusing specifically on tensions between fact and emotion and representations of expertise in the news media, we argue for a greater respect for emotional responses to crime in moving the public criminology agenda forward. We suggest that if public criminology sets as its goal educating the public about crime with an eye towards injecting a counter/critical discourse into ‘get tough’ crime control policies, then public criminologists need to recognize and take seriously the public’s emotions rather than negate them. Drawing on the work of Ahmed (The cultural politics of emotion. Routledge, London, 2004), we suggest that the role of the expert is not to simply inform citizens of the ‘facts’ about crime, but to establish—through emotions—the relationship between themselves and the imagined criminal Other (Young in Imagining crime: Textual outlaws and criminal conversations. Sage Publications, London, 1996). Thus, alongside trying to convince the public to be more ‘rational’ when it comes to crime, critical criminologists must start to accept people’s fear and anger as legitimate reactions and try to redirect these emotions toward more productive ends.     

NO COMMUNITY IS AN ISLAND: THE EFFECTS OF RESOURCE DEPRIVATION ON URBAN VIOLENCE IN SPATIALLY AND SOCIALLY PROXIMATE COMMUNITIES*

The link between resource deprivation and urban violence has long been explored in criminological research. Studies, however, have largely ignored the potential for resource deprivation in particular communities to affect rates of violence in others. The relative inattention is notable because of the strong theoretical grounds to anticipate influences that extend both to geographically contiguous areas and to those that, though not contiguous, share similar social characteristics. We argue that such influences—what we term spatial and social proximity effects, respectively—constitute a central feature of community dynamics. To support this argument, we develop and test theoretically derived hypotheses about spatial and social proximity effects of resource deprivation on aggregated and disaggregated homicide counts. Our analyses indicate that local area resource deprivation contributes to violence in socially proximate communities, an effect that, in the case of instrumental homicides, is stronger when such communities are spatially proximate. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for theories focused on community‐level social processes and violence, and for policies aimed at reducing crime in disadvantaged areas.     

Tensions for Green Criminology

This article examines tensions that for the most part exist outside green criminology that could—and should—be brought under the green criminological gaze—issues that are not necessarily the province of green criminology but which have implications for the study of environmental crime and harm. Examples include: the conflicting messages that Western society encounters with respect to “victims” and “survivors”; claims of a lack of future orientation (Hayward 2012) in contrast to assertions of a risk-aversion in late modernity (Giddens 1999); frictions between the “precautionary principle” (Magnus 2008) and “precautionary logic” (Aas 2013); and the peculiarities of the “war on youth” (Grossberg 2001) in an era of “overparenting” (Kamenetz 2015) and “overindulged youth” (Kolbert 2012). The goal of the article is less to promulgate an agenda for green criminology than to heighten awareness of issues and contradictions that may contribute to environmental despoliation and degradation or frustrate efforts to address such harm.     

False Starts,Wrong Turns and Dead Ends: Reflections on Recent Developments in Criminology

The nature and direction of criminology has changed significantly over the past two decades. The subject area has also grown exponentially and become more diverse. New fields of inquiry are opening up as new issues are added to the criminological agenda. However, at the same time there are some unwelcome developments in the discipline that impact on the orientation of the subject and which detract from its overall viability and standing. The aim of this paper is to identify these unwelcome trends in order to contribute to the development of a more critical and coherent criminology.