Left realist criminology: Strengths,weaknesses and the feminist critique

Although there is an already large British literature both supporting and attacking left realism, and a growing North American interest on the subject among criminologists, there has been surprisingly little written which attempts to locate both the strengths and weaknesses of the left realist position on crime control. Perhaps the place where the left realists may be weakest is in response to a feminist critique. Actually, it is not only left realism but the socialist left in general which has been unsuccessful in providing adequate responses to the issues brought forth by feminists. This paper attempts to locate the position of left realism within the left criminology debate, and to find its strong and weak points. Further, it attempts to explicate the feminist critique, and to suggest responses critical criminologists might explore, such as those proposed by peacemaking criminology. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** AW502012 00004     

Quantitative criminology in The Netherlands

This article briefly describes quantitative criminology in The Netherlands since the seventies. Dutch quantitative criminologists have been active in most fields of the discipline of criminology: research has been done on the etiology of crime and, in relation to this, the self-report methodology. A number of victimization surveys have been executed, and in relation to this, attention was given to fear of crime, victims in the judicial system, and situational approaches to crime. There has been research on policy evaluation, sentencing, and differential treatment in the criminal justice system, and alternative sanctions. Recently three major international studies have been coordinated by Dutch criminologists: an international self-report study, an international victim survey of households, and an international survey of victimization among businesses. In this article we describe the first two studies and briefly compare some of their features. Overall, it appears that Dutch quantitative criminology is embedded in the international mainstream of criminology and, in general, has been strongly related to policy concerns.     

The failure of postmodern criminology

Postmodernism has recently washed up on the shores of criminology, and is the subject of considerable theoretical debate. This essay critically assesses some of the most trenchant and relevant components of the theoretical bases for postmodernism, and sketches out their applicability to criminology. It argues that postmodernism can be of little assistance to intellectuals committed to critique and fundamental social change. While postmodernists look down so severely at ‘old-fashioned’ ‘meta-narratives’ like Marxism, it is now they who are falling off the contemporary agenda, because they are dated and theoretically flawed. My main argument is that the theoretical imporverishment of postmodernism creates an obstacle to the development of a truly critical criminology. One of the current challenges of critical criminology is to amplify the critique of postmodern criminology and to reorient the trajectory of critical criminology away from the postmodern detour. The essay explores the historical context of the emergence of postmodernism, the modernist/ postmodernist era, deconstructionism, ‘meta-narratives’, idealism, form and content, fragmentation/pluralism/relativism, absence of progressive praxis, conservatism and Marxism.     

The Sutherland tradition in criminology: a bibliometric story

In this article, we provide an overview of the body of knowledge associated with the Sutherland tradition in criminology. We track Sutherland’s impact through a bibliometric analysis of papers citing any of Sutherland’s works and by focusing on publications that are co-cited with Sutherland. This approach enables us to visualize Sutherland’s role in relation to the forerunners and founding fathers of criminology during his own active period, to his followers, and to contemporary scholars. The dataset consisted of 2596 genuine articles that cite at least one of Sutherland’s publications, in which he appears as first author in Web of Science ^TM published between 1955 and 2010. The results show a clear impact of the Sutherland tradition more or less throughout the twentieth century, peaking during the 1930s and 1940s and decreasing in the 1990s, when the Sutherland tradition was more powerfully challenged, primarily by the life-course tradition.     

Postmodern criminology in relation to radical and conflict criminology

The literature on postmodern criminology suggests that there is some relationship between it and radical criminology. This relationship apparently is based in part on the ract that both are further related to conflict theory. However, conceptual analyses on these types of theories have not fully explicated whatever similarities and differences exist among them. This essay identifies six core theoretical assertions in conflict criminology and compares them to parallel assertions in radical and postmodern criminology. Such comparison is followed by a discussion on the relevance of conflict and radical theory as conceptual backdrops from which to comprehend postmodern inquiry.     

The analysis of case-control studies in criminology

Case-control designs, in which subjects are selected conditionally on the value of a dependent variable, are well suited for research in criminology. For many research issues, case-control studies should be preferred over cohort studies because they can provide estimates of the same parameters, with equal standard errors, for less cost. This paper describes the case-control design and some of the problems that arise in interpreting them. An approach to analysis and interpretation that has developed in epidemiology is presented.     

Rethinking critical criminology

This paper takes the form of a report on the panel discussion held at the conclusion of the 1992 meetings of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control in Padua in September 1992. In the light of a perceived crisis of relevance for earlier, 1970s notions of critique in criminology, and in the context of a conference dedicated to the theme of human rights in a uniting Europe, eight panellists from Italy, England, and Canada via Ireland debated their different versions of the project of critical criminology in the last years of the twentieth century. Each of these presentations is summarised here, and an attempt is made to recognise the emergence of a debate between a human rights criminology, eversensitive to the possibilities of repression and control in Fortress Europe, and an alternative perspective, predicated perhaps on some notion of Social Defence and a realist programme of crime prevention and control across free market Europe.     

犯罪学研究的路径选择--兼论犯罪学的学科地位

犯罪是最古老的社会现象之一,由于它的特殊的社会危害性,很早就引起了人们对它的研究,而研究犯罪的终极目的是“因为有犯罪,并且为了没有犯罪”①,即从社会上预防和减少犯罪。依据原南斯拉夫犯罪学家帕施奇给犯罪学下过的定义“犯罪学是为了预防和控制犯罪而把犯罪作为社会现象     

Imperialism, crime and criminology: Towards the decolonisation of criminology

Cohen (1988) once concluded that it is ironic that critics in the West are identifying forms of social control that are more traditional in the Third World as better alternatives to the neo–classical and positivistic repressive traditions in the West while some suggest that what they found malignant in the West should be exported to the Third World as benign. In this paper, I am going beyond Western crime control models to examine the character of criminology itself as an imperialist science for the control of others.     

台湾犯罪学理论观点比较

台湾地区犯罪学研究十分繁荣,专家众多、学派林立,为了加强对台湾地区犯罪学发展情况的了解,有必要对岛内几个具有代表性的犯罪学理论观点进行梳理、比较。     

Corporate environmental responsibility and criminology

This article addresses corporate environmental responsibility (CER) and aims to present a criminological analysis of it. We studied the opinion of a number of principle actors involved in CER in Europe in order to determine how they perceive it in terms of its definition, aetiology and approaches. For each of these dimensions we relate back to a criminological framework to ascertain how it is positioned in the green criminological debate. We start out by providing information on what corporate environmental responsibility is and how it relates to corporate social responsibility and sustainable development. Then we outline the theoretical framework in accordance with the three central themes for the criminological analysis of CER: definition, aetiology and approaches. We also explain the method that was used (semi-structured interviews). Next, we present the results according to the same threefold structure. Finally we discuss these results in a last part, which is divided in two. First, we look at the challenges that the criminological perspective poses for CER in terms of definition, aetiology and approaches. The second part of the discussion turns the question around and wonders how CER could contribute to greening criminology.