Criminology as social control science: State influence on criminogical research in Canada

The focus of this paper is on the relationship between criminological research and government practices regarding research funding. Specifically, two major modes of funding criminological research in Canada are examined:Contract Research and Grant Research. After presenting the case that government policy directions and the government's methods of funding criminological research have significant effects on the types of research that are conducted in this country, the argument is made that criminologists interested in conducting state funded research should first ask themselves the fundamental question of who is likely to benefit from the results of such research. Revised version of a paper presented at the Canadian Law and Society Association Meetings, Quebec City, 1989. The author would like to thank several colleagues for comments made on earlier drafts of this paper, with special thanks to M.A. Kandrack and K.R Grant.     

Poverty and Peacemaking Criminology: Beyond Mainstream Criminology

Mainstream criminology has traditionally focused on poverty as an isolated variable, whose effects are typically explored by inserting a limited measure of this variable in a multivariate analysis. Peacemaking criminology, however, offers an alternative perspective. In this paradigm, poverty is seen as a source of suffering and, to a degree, a “crime” in and of itself. Furthermore, the suffering poverty engenders is an enveloping social experience that exposes its victims to concentrated disadvantage—or, to use Jonathan Kozol’s (1991) term, to a range of “savage inequalities.” Thus, poverty is best understood not as an isolated variable, but as a master status of fundamental social reality that subjects people to lives filled with suffering—suffering that can engender criminal behavior. From a peacemaking perspective, a key avenue for preventing crime is, in the short run, diminishing the suffering poverty causes and, in the long run, embracing social policies that reduce the prevalence of economic suffering in contemporary society.

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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.     

Criminology post-Maastricht

My objectives in this paper are to try and identify the range of challenges that now confront critical criminologists who work in, and are attentive to, the “new Europe” whose construction was so clearly signalled by the Maastricht Treaty (the Treaty on European Union) of 1993. I want to concentrate here on two issues — firstly, the challenge of situating the work of criminology in relation to the process of political union (and enlargement) of the European Union, and, secondly, the articulation of an agenda of work for critical criminology, that derives, from an understanding of this broader context. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Institutionalization of Criminology: A Prerequisite to Comparative Criminology

The increased prevalence and enrichment of comparative analysis would invigorate criminology generally as a scientific field because comparative criminology is a movement toward a “true science of criminology.” But, at least at its present stage, comparative criminology awaits the institutionalization of criminology at a level sufficient for the essential availability of criminologists capable of and competent for meeting the peculiar demands of transnational research.

“Comparative, coordinated and interdisciplinary research should be carried out to determine the relative effects of programs in different countries” and through cooperation between researchers from different countries…to develop a highly promising new field of comparative criminology”, in order to determine “uniformities and differences in causal influences, in predictive factors, and in results of preventive and treatment programs” and to develop “a true science of criminology.”     

基因科技与犯罪研究

20世纪90年代以来,由于“人类基因组计划”的实施,遗传学再次成为显学,媒体上几乎每周都可以看见科学家发现某一遗传因子与某种疾病相关的报道,与此同时,遗传对人类行为的影响也为广大民众所关注。事实上,遗传与犯罪关系的研究早在19世纪就已开始,并在20世纪初年进入顶峰状态,但因为行为遗传学与优生学的近亲关系,遗传与犯罪在二战后沉寂了20多年。20世纪70年代,关于犯罪遗传的研究又一次进入遗传学家和犯罪学家的研究领域;并一直持续到现在。     

Overview of Criminology in Europe

The editors of the European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research wanted to include an article with an overview of European criminology in this special issue on European criminology. But in order to discover whether there is such a thing as European criminology, one should first look at the state of affairs of criminology in the individual countries of Europe. This article is an attempt to do so. It is based on a short questionnaire posted to individuals in 34 European countries, a report by Walgrave and Goris, entitled An Overview of University Institutions of Criminology (1996), an Internet search on selected keywords, and some background material available in the WODC library. It gives an overview of criminological research and research institutes; European co-operation, comparative research and European networks; criminological training; national societies of criminology and criminological periodicals.     

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.     

Tax Havens and Criminology

For more then thirty years, "tax havens" have allowed major players form the political and financial spheres, as well as from the criminal one, to act in a "sovereign" way, that is to say, in a determinant way, so that their decisions become decisive in the historical course. "Offshore sovereignty" designates the opportunities that actors off all stripes have in the offshore centres, legal havens, free zones and free ports of the world, to conduct their activities unhampered by state structures, which they do by investing their money in recognized economic entities, or financing political parties.     

认真对待近代犯罪学

中国近代犯罪学是在学习和译介西方犯罪学经典著作的基础之上起步的。可贵的是,近代犯罪学先驱们对于西方犯罪学的译介保持了一种理性的态度,并没有忽视对中国本土犯罪问题的关注。相对而言,近代中国的犯罪学研究可谓"相当兴旺发达",近代学者的不懈努力为中国犯罪学的发展奠定了良好基础。但是,当代中国犯罪学的起步基本上抛弃了近代犯罪学所创造的学术基础,对近代犯罪学的了解和评价充满了误解,这种状况亟需改变。     

Problems of Method in Comparative Criminology

Methodological problems of conducting comparative research in criminology are reviewed in the light of the severe lack of comparative research in criminology. Methodological difficulties in conducting survey research in comparative criminology are outlined. These include the necessity to establish equivalence of meaning, comparability of samples, temporal equivalence and equivalence of interviewers. It is suggested that an important and as yet unexplored avenue for comparative criminology may be in the area of comparative systems analysis.