Development of a black criminology and the role of the black criminologist

In its study of black criminality, the discipline of criminology has failed to cultivate a cohesive, continuous and recognized body of research—what is termed a “black criminology.” Inasmuch as the theoretical framework of the discipline is limited by its failure to develop this subfield, policy recommendations proposed to and adopted by the criminal justice system are limited. It is argued that the development of a black criminology is necessary to fill this gap—in much the same way that feminist criminology filled a void. The components and scope of this subfield are outlined and the role of the black criminologist in the development of a black criminology is evaluated. It is argued that although black criminologists are needed to chart a black criminology, their participation alone is insufficient for the full development and vitality of this subfield.     

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。     

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。     

DEVELOPMENT AND FRACTURE OF A DISCIPLINE: LEGACIES OF THE SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY AT BERKELEY

In the early twentieth century, the University of California—Berkeley opened its doors to police professionals for instruction in “police science.” This program ultimately developed into the full‐fledged School of Criminology, whose graduates helped shape American criminology and criminal justice until well into the 1970s. Scholarship at the School of Criminology eventually fractured into three distinct traditions: “Administrative criminology” applied scientific methods in pursuit of refining law enforcement practices, “law and society” coupled legal scholarship with social scientific methods, and “radical criminology” combined Marxist critiques of the state with community activism. Those scientific traditions relied on competing epistemic premises and normative aspirations, and they drew legitimacy from different sources. Drawing on oral histories and archival data permits a neo‐institutional analysis of how each of these criminological traditions emerged, acquired stability, and subsided. The Berkeley School of Criminology provides fertile ground to examine trends in the development of criminal justice as a profession, criminology as a discipline and its place in elite universities, the uncoupling of criminology from law and society scholarship, and criminal justice policy's disenchantment with the academy. These legacies highlight how the development of modern criminology and the professionalization of American law enforcement find precedent in events that originate at Berkeley.     

Crimes of the state: Victimisation of South African political exiles in the United Kingdom

Victimology and criminology have been spectacularly unsuccessful in confronting the way that governments victimise their opponents. This paper is concerned with state violence against opponents who are based ouside the national territory, political exiles. Throughout their time in exile in the United Kingdom, South Africans connected to the African National Congress were subject to physical and symbolic violence from the South African government through a series of ideological, administrative and paramilitary measures. In this paper, I use the example of counter-exile activity in London to argue that researchers must contemplate research agendas that challenge state policy when the causes of violence have been the direct result of state policy even if that policy has been fundamental to the continuing existence of the regime. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Hans Gross and the beginning of criminology on a scientific basis

Modern criminology--if one wants to consider it a separate scientific discipline at all--is usually perceived as being mainly influenced by the methods of natural sciences supplemented by components from the field of psychology, which, at least in some of its conceptions, tends to define itself as a natural science, too. If we take a look at the history of science, we will see development of criminology in this direction was not necessarily inevitable. The scientific work of the Austrian Hans Gross (1847-1915), one of the founding fathers of scientific criminology, serves as an example of the way how natural sciences and their exact methods became established in the methodological apparatus of modern criminology, although in praxi his claim for the application of exact methods was all too often replaced by irrational and intuitive ways of working. Still, Hans Gross' fundamental decision for the exact methods derived from the natural sciences is an important step towards a criminology that can be understood as a part of natural sciences, largely superseding the methods of cultural sciences and anthropological philosophy. This approach made the (criminal) human being an object of measurement and can result in the concept of man as a mere phenomenon of quantity. This is, on the one hand, ethically questionable; on the other hand, it made modern criminology more efficient and successful.     

刑法预防性立法对犯罪学之影响:困境与出路

当代风险社会及其构成要素,是互相联系、互相成就和互相影响的刑法学与犯罪学的共同知识场域。预防性立法模式在刑法立法实践中确立,预防型犯罪也被简化为安全的技术辅助。犯罪学研究的犯罪现象、原因和对策随之发生变化,其研究范式也便面临危机和挑战。针对预防刑法的“事前法”特征,对其进行研究的犯罪学也应转向“事前”犯罪学。事前犯罪学在传统的“现象-原因-对策”研究范式的基础上,更应进行问题意识和研究方式的转化,为预防性立法走向理性、科学和合理贡献知识。事前犯罪学理论知识,要进入预防性立法的决策场域,就应寻找适合预防性立法的犯罪学逻辑体系。其展现的知识逻辑和问题意识,不是要和预防刑法知识体系合谋,而是要在既有理论的基础上,整合和构建恰当的研究范式和知识库存、跨学科借新智、打破传统事实学窠臼、遵守法治精神,据此走出困境,也为预防性立法提供根据。     

SILENCE AND MEMORY IN CRIMINOLOGY—THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CRIMINOLOGY 2009 SUTHERLAND ADDRESS*

Two recent American Society of Criminology presidential addresses have identified as a key problem the fact that criminology lacks a history. In this address, I ask why criminology (in contrast to closely related fields) has generated so few studies of its past; I also identify some results of this failure and discuss why intellectual fields need a sense of their origins and development. History molds individual and collective identities; it lays a foundation for sociologies of knowledge; it encourages reflexivity, teaches us where our ideas came from, and gives us a sense of where we are going. To encourage historical work, I propose an overall framework for understanding the evolution of criminology, reaching back to the late eighteenth century and continuing into the present. My overall framework is that of scientific modernism, within which I identify the following three primary phases: exploratory modernism, confident modernism, and agonistic modernism. In conclusion, I suggest ways to stimulate histories of science in the field of criminology.     

THE LIFE COURSE OF CRIMINOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES: THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CRIMINOLOGY 2003 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS*

The field of criminology lacks a sense of its own history. To rectify this situation, I apply the concepts and framework of the life‐course perspective to the development of criminology as a discipline. Examining criminology in the United States over the last 100 years, I discuss three eras (or life‐course phases), intellectual continuities and turning points in the field. My thesis is that if we knew our history, we would realize that ideas about crime matter. I offer a revised version on how to view criminology and in doing so address the theme of the 2003 annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, “The Challenge of Practice, the Benefits of Theory.”     

EDWIN H. SUTHERLAND AND THE MICHAEL‐ADLER REPORT: SEARCHING FOR THE SOUL OF CRIMINOLOGY SEVENTY YEARS LATER*

In response to a devastating critique of the state of criminology known as the Michael‐Adler Report, Edwin H. Sutherland created differential association theory as a paradigm for the field of criminology. I contend that Sutherland's strategy was flawed because he embraced a sociological model of crime and in doing so adopted a form of sociological positivism. Furthermore, Sutherland ignored key facts about crime that were contrary to his theoretical predilections. Recognizing that facts must come first and that criminology is an interdisciplinary field of study, I offer life‐course criminology as a paradigm for understanding the causes and dynamics of crime. In addition, I identify three warning signs that I believe inhibit the advancement of criminology as a science and a serious intellectual enterprise.     

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.     

On an entrepreneurial criminology of mass political violence

This article examines an entrepreneurial criminology of mass political violencewithin the broader set of criminological communications on this theme, and identifies some troubling dimensions of the criminological closures on which the enterprise rests. The criminological enterprise over mass political violence testifies to ambitions of external expansion at the expense of other social scientific analyses, that are represented as ill-qualified for the study of this particular object, while evacuating from its conception of criminology intellectual traditions averse to the promotion of criminalization as a means to constitute and respond to troubling events. The normative values advanced in enterprising calls seem to have led to a failure to submit certain assumptions to rigorous intellectual (and political) critique. The result is an analytic conservatism that, perhaps unwittingly, reinforces dominant assumptions about crime, as well as an uncritical adoption of liberal internationalism and western cultural dominance.     

Book Reviews

This article explores the reasons why women commit crime. It reviews the historical theories of female criminality, which are mainly biologically‐based and largely discounted, and moves on to examine the more modern literature on criminology, which is based on an explanation as to why males offend. Using interviews with female offenders in Scotland which the author has recently conducted, it is argued that the male explanations are inadequate to explain female offending. The twenty six in‐depth interviews carried out indicate that it is problems with relationships — such as the experience of being in care, self‐abuse, sexual abuse, and domestic violence — which are associated with a female propensity to crime.     

Crime,Justice, and the Under‐Laborer: On the Criminology of the Shadow and the Search for Disciplinary Identity and Legitimacy

This article proposes an alternative vision for what criminal justice can represent such that its interests in becoming a full‐fledged academic discipline are advanced. Linked to philosophical inquiry (the under‐laborer), emphasis is placed on explicating how insights derived from ontology, epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics underscore the field. Coupled with this more probing excursion is psychoanalytic reflexivity (the criminology of the shadow). The manner in which the philosophical lens informs criminal justice is delineated, and the logic of this shadow criminology is described. As dimensions of an inclusive organizing scheme, their potential for fostering integration in crime and justice studies consistent with the goals of disciplinary identity and legitimacy is explored. The implications of the proposed model—especially for charting a new direction in theory, research, policy, and pedagogy—are also highlighted.     

Violence as unresponsiveness: Toward a new conception of crime

A theory of crime and violence as “unresponsiveness” was inferred by translating concepts of American criminology into Norwegian. According to this theory, punishment of offenders is a product of a criminality that the punishers share. Reducing crime and violence entails decentralizing and democratizing government. The practice of criminology—testing propositions about crime and violence—becomes problematic.     

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.     

The Color of Their Skin or the Content of Their Behavior? Race and Perceptions of African American Legislators

Abstract: Previous studies have shown that, because of their race, African American candidates for public office are often evaluated less favorably than their colleagues by voters. Does this dynamic continue when black candidates become elected officials? Using data on the North Carolina General Assembly, I address this question by examining the effects of race on perceptions of legislative effectiveness. When the dependent variable is the average effectiveness rating given by three groups—lobbyists, journalists, and other legislators—there is evidence that African American representatives are evaluated negatively because of their race. When the dependent variable is disaggregated into the separate effectiveness ratings given by each of the respondent groups individually, these negative perceptions of blacks on account of race remain on the part of lobbyists and other legislators, but not for journalists. Moreover, the negative perceptions of black representatives are not mitigated by these representatives possessing certain characteristics (e.g., seniority and leadership positions) that previous studies have found to be correlated with positive effectiveness evaluations. The presence of an African American Speaker in one legislative session did, however, seem to attenuate the negative perceptions.     

龙勃罗梭在中国——一个犯罪学史的考察

龙勃罗梭及其学说在中国之命运变迁,是中国犯罪学发展历程的一个缩影.中国犯罪学以译介龙勃罗梭著作和理论为开端,其夭折也以批判和否定龙勃罗梭及其学说为先导,而其再生与发展同样是以对龙勃罗梭的肯定和客观评价为重要标志.因为龙勃罗梭,犯罪学始成为科学.遗憾的是尽管龙勃罗梭的学说传入中国已逾百年,但是当代中国犯罪学总体仍然处于形...