Critical
criminology is a form of criminology (the study of crime) using a conflict perspective of
some kind: Marxism, feminism, political economy theory or critical theory.
In all of these, the focus is on locating the genesis of crime
and the interpretation of what is ‘justice’ within a structure of class and
status inequalities.
In critical criminology, law and the definition and punishment
of crime are then seen as connected to a system of social inequality and as tools for the
reproduction of this inequality.
Criticism and Criminology: In Search of Legitimacy
GEORGE PAVLICH, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Theoretical Criminology, Vol. 3, No. 1, 29-51 (1999) DOI: 10.1177/1362480699003001002 ©
1999 SAGE Publications
Although the new criminology held a mandate to advance novel critical genres, it developed
a radical program at the expense of studying the bases of its critique. In this article, I
argue that by overlooking the latter, influential strands of radical criminology (e.g.
left realism) have inadvertently succumbed to the lure of an insubstantial critical
pragmatism. Here, critique claims legitimacy either on the basis of an ability to secure
universal emancipation, or increase managerial efficiency. Both claims are problematic
since contemporary knowledge-producing arenas no longer embrace the certainties driving
modernity's critical genres and technical efficiency disallows fundamental critique. As
such, critique has been immoderately abridged. By not paying sufficient attention to such
issues, many critical criminologists have not appreciated the extent to which their
favored critical genres are ill-suited to an ethos wracked by uncertainty. In trying to
recover legitimate genres of critique, I refer to recent developments within critical
criminology and I explore how Lyotard's work can help us to reconceive critical practices
in criminology. The discussion concludes with a prologue outlining an alternative critical
genre that might claim legitimacy through `paralogy.' -
tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/3/1/29
Reclaiming Critical Criminology: Social Justice and the European Tradition
RENÉ VAN SWAANINGEN, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
This article seeks to examine the relevance of the continental European tradition in
critical criminology for the theoretical elaboration of criminological theory today. The
first step towards an answer is a rather descriptive one: how did critical criminology
develop historically on the European continent? That is the theme of the first section. In
the second section, the social and cultural developments which accompanied the heyday of
critical criminology in the 1970s will be analysed, and an exposé will be given of the
spectrum of the different critical perspectives on the continent. The same cultural
sociological line of thought will be followed in the explanation of the rather abrupt
decline of critical criminology shortly after in the third section. The need for a
normative counter-weight to present-day, managerial political discourse which follows from
these analyses also forms the prelude to a reaffirmation of critical criminology in
section four. Because many of its original concepts and presumptions no longer fit very
well to the changed political and socio-cultural reality of the late 1990s, a
reconstruction of critical criminology is proposed in section five. -
tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/3/1/5
Critical Criminology, Existential Humanism, and Social Justice: Exploring the Contours
of Conceptual Integration
Author: Arrigo B.A.
Source: Critical Criminology, Volume 10, Number 2, 2001, pp. 83-95(13)
Abstract: 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. - ingentaconnect.com
Critical Criminology in the Classroom.
Authors: Kramer, Ronald C.
Abstract: The major objective of the labeling perspective and conflict/power approaches to
teaching college level criminology is to increase student understanding of crime as a
sociological phenomenon. The labeling perspective maintains that the way in which
criminology concepts are defined influences the kinds of questions and issues which are
focused upon. Conflict/power approaches assume that criminality is not a particular
behavior although it is defined as behavior by those who create and administer the
criminal law. The author proposes that criminology teachers can help students understand
the importance of labels and the process of criminalization by organizing an introductory
criminology course around five major topics: 1) comparison of definitions of crime as
behavior and crime as legal status, 2) investigation of bias in crime statistics, 3)
historical, analytical, and critical survey of criminological theory, 4) review of
literature on criminal laws, law enforcement, structure and functioning of criminal
courts, and the correctional process, and 5) types of criminal behavior including violent,
property, corporate, occupational, public order, organized, professional, and political.
Course materials are suggested and briefly annotated, case studies are cited, and a course
outline is presented. - eric.ed.gov
Rethinking critical criminology: A panel discussion
Journal Crime, Law and Social Change
Rene van Swaaningen, Erasmus University, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Ian Taylor, University of Salford, M5 4WT, UK
Abstract 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. - springerlink.com/content/q47v302h74100622/
Rebuilding Utopia? Critical criminology and the difficult road of reconstruction in
Latin America
Journal Crime, Law and Social Change
Carlos Alberto Elbert - Universities of Buenos Aires and, USA, del Litoral, de la
Patagonia
Abstract This contribution assesses the developmentof criminology, during the last few
decades, and contemplates the future course of critical criminology in view of
developments in current capitalism, and their impact on ``Third World'' societies (Latin
America in particular). - springerlink.com/content/v34444j220423356/
Facing Change: New Directions for Critical Criminology in the Early New
Millennium?
Western Criminology Review 3 (2). wcr.sonoma.edu/v3n2/hil.html.
Richard Hil
Abstract: The following article examines the process of self-reflection that has
characterized critical criminology over recent years. It is argued that this process of
'narcissistic contemplation' has resulted in a confused range of responses to the study of
crime and crime control. Since the mid-1970s, critical criminology has been characterised
by a range of dramatic and often paradigmatic changes that have taken it from the bounds
of social reaction theory and Marxism to its contemporary expression as a project focused
on deconstruction and governmentality. Generally, critical criminology has been left
battered and bruised by the ebbs and flows of politics, history and theory over the past
few decades, and it remains ontologically confronted by the perennial challenge of
'relevance.' Rather than engaging in yet another round of fruitless 'reactive
reflexivity,' a way forward for critical criminology might be to reconsider its role in
relation to the discipline as a whole and to ally itself even more closely with
progressive social movements. The alternative is to remain tied to endless introspection
or to become absorbed too readily into the realist and correctional agendas of government.
Richard Quinney's Journey: The Marxist Dimension
Kevin B. Anderson
Crime & Delinquency, Vol. 48, No. 2, 232-242 (2002) DOI: 10.1177/0011128702048002003
© 2002 SAGE Publications
The relationship of Richard Quinney's critical criminology to Marxism is explored in this
article. The originality of his version of critical criminology is discussed, from its
origins in social constructionism, to his engagement with Marxism in the 1970s, to the
importance in his later work of issues such as existentialism, Eastern thought, and Erich
Fromm's socialist humanism. It is argued that Quinney's writings, despite several shifts
of perspective, nonetheless exhibit some basic continuities and that an engagement with
various forms of unorthodox, humanistic Marxism is one of these. -
cad.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/48/2/232
CRITICAL CRIMINOLOGY AND PENAL GUARANTEEISM. Cap. Criminol., Oct. 2005, vol.33,
no.4, p.429-444. ISSN 0798-9598.
LEAL SUAREZ, Luisa and GARCIA PIRELA, Adela.
Abstract: The main objective of this paper is to present some reflections on the
importance of penal guarantee-ism as a theoretical-methodological tool in order to
approach the objective of the study of Critical Criminology, and as a rationalization
strategy in punitive control. In this sense certain aspects generated in criminological
thought as to the reference to “social contract” as a basis for the
legitimization of state punitive jurisdiction. The arguments center around a questioning
of certain basic postulates of guarantee-ism that could be seen as contradictory to the
critical character of criminology and within its limitation, as a pacifying mechanism in
social conflict. Finally we point out the validity of guarantee-ism as a theory that
determines the limits of punitive power in the face of liberties established by the state
of rights, the contingency of the justification of penalty, the rationality of which
derives from the minimization of violence, a concept of security based on human dignity
and the need for alternative proposals for criminal policy that take into consideration
the interpretation of social conflict capable of overcoming regulatory artifices towards
punitive reaction.
British and U.S. Left Realism: A Critical Comparison
Walter S. DeKeseredy, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Carleton University,
Ottawa, Ontario KIS 5B6, CANADA
Martin D. Schwartz, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Ohio University, Athens,
Ohio 45701, U.S.A.
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, Vol. 35, No. 3,
248-262 (1991) DOI: 10.1177/0306624X9103500307 © 1991 SAGE Publications
Left realism has generated enormous interest and controversy in critical criminology over
the past several years both in North America and in the United Kingdom. While there are
important similarities between the writings from these countries, there are also some deep
differences and divisions. This article provides some explication of these similarities
and differences within a critical context. - ijo.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/35/3/248
Red-Penciled: The Neglect of Critical Perspectives in Introductory Criminal Justice
Textbooks
Author(s): Richard A. Wright ; Christopher J. Schreck
Editor(s): J. M. Miller
Journal: Journal of Crime and Justice Volume:23 Issue:2 Dated:2000 Pages:45 to 67
Several commentators have complained that critical criminology is neglected in mainstream
publications on criminology and criminal justice, and this criticism was examined in an
empirical analysis of the coverage of critical criminology in 27 introductory criminal
justice textbooks published between 1990 and 1999.
Abstract: The treatment of critical criminology in the textbooks was operationally defined
by areas, topics, concepts, and definitions mentioned under the heading of critical
criminology. Specifically, this included coverage of anarchist criminology; the
relationship between class, race, and/or gender oppression and criminal behavior or
criminal justice practice; and the conflict explanation of the law. This also included
coverage of critical feminism, left realism, news-making criminology, peacemaking topics,
postmodern/constitutive criminology, and earlier radical arguments. Findings revealed
introductory criminal justice textbooks devoted less coverage to critical perspectives
than recent introductory criminology textbooks. Theoretical orientations of criminal
justice textbooks, critical or mainstream, strongly affected the extent of coverage in the
textbooks. Among areas associated with critical criminology, the textbooks devoted the
most attention to peacemaking topics and the relationship between class, race, and/or
gender oppression and criminal behavior and criminal justice practice. Anarchist
criminology, critical feminism, left realism, and postmodern/constitutive criminology
received little or no attention. Textbook authors recognized class, race, and/or gender
inequalities existed in the criminal justice system but largely ignored the theoretical
explanations for these problems. - ncjrs.gov/app/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=186992
Left Out? The Coverage of Critical Perspectives in Introductory Criminology Textbooks,
1990-1999
Author(s): Richard A. Wright
Journal: Critical Criminologyy Volume:9 Issue:1/2 Dated:Autumn 2000 Pages:101 to 122
This article studies the coverage of critical perspectives in 34 introductory criminology
textbooks published from 1990 to 1999.
Abstract: The article examines how the coverage of critical perspectives is influenced by:
(1) the theoretical orientations of the texts; (2) the positions of the texts on debate
over conflict and consensus theories of law; and (3) the positions of the texts on the
evidence supporting critical perspectives. The article measures the average number of
pages that the textbooks devote to critical criminology and compares the amounts of space
the books give to these perspectives. It assesses the claim that texts that discuss
critical perspectives "limit themselves to ancient intellectual and political battles
and a detailed coverage of long discredited leftist theories." The article confirms
that critical/radical perspectives in general, but in particular recent developments in
critical criminology (including critical feminism, left realism, peacemaking criminology,
and postmodern criminology) are often omitted from contemporary criminology textbooks. The
article briefly describes four textbooks that it considers contain superior coverage of
critical perspectives. - ncjrs.gov/app/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=187854
Erich Fromm and Critical Criminology: Beyond the Punitive Society.
Kevin Anderson and Richard Quinney, editors.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000, 176 pp.
Erich Fromm was best known as a psychoanalyst, a humanist, and the author of numerous
books that combined and revised Marxist and Freudian ideas on the individual and society.
Although Fromm is also the author of three articles on the psychology of crime, these
essays are unknown to criminologists. To redress this omission, this collection of six
essays also includes two of Fromm’s three articles on crime, “The State as
Educator” and “On the Psychology of the Criminal and the Punitive Society.”
The editors do not say why they did not publish “Oedipus in Innsbruck.”
Rainer Funk, Fromm’s literary executor, provides a brief biography but little insight
into Fromm’s thoughts. He sketches Fromm’s education (law, sociology, philosophy
and psychology), literary output, various academic posts and encounters with notable
figures. But Funk passes over Fromm’s association with the Frankfurt school in two
sentences, never mentioning Fromm’s disagreements with Herbert Marcuse (whom he
considered a nihilist), and mutes Fromm’s differences with Freud. More importantly,
he fails to relate Fromm’s psychological insights to criminology.
Richard Quinney makes more of an effort to connect Fromm’s socialist humanism to
critical criminology. But jejune phrases such as “We stand before the mystery of
existence,” “love is the essence of being human,” and “Punishment is
not the way of peace,” populate the essay, obfuscate his intentions, and mark the
essay as homiletic and Pollyannish.
Lynn Chancer explores Fromm’s ideas on sadomasochism, in an effort to make him as
relevant to the social sciences as Foucault and Bourdieu. But the attempt is faint, as she
fails to explore these writers’ thoughts on sadomasochism and crime. Her intent,
rather, is to equate the desire for sadomasochism with the alienation one experiences
within capitalism (34). Borrowing from Fromm and her own work on the topic, she views
sadomasochism as a trope for the dominators and submissives that populate capitalist
societies. She turns to Fromm’s ideas not for insight into sadomasochism, but to
“help us better understand the causes of crime” and its “solutions”
(40-1). These are peculiar pursuits for a critical criminologist, but they are not, it
seems, uncommon among Frommians, who approach the study of crime from positions of health
and illness. Chancer seems unaware of other ways to view sadomasochism outside of the
economic, and of the difficulties (and danger) of establishing the causes of human
behavior. Chancer has a totalizing view of persons and institutions that distracts from a
critical sociological inquiry into the relationship between sadomasochism and crime
(assuming one exists).
John Wozniak also focuses on “moral” lapses as he turns to Fromm for solutions
to the problem of alienation. Fromm posited that there are five basic human needs that one
must satisfy to be healthy. What stands in the way of good health is the “phenomenon
of alienation” (47), which capitalism fosters and makes worse. Wozniak’s
examples of the alienated under capitalism include: the frustrated graduate student who
killed his advisors, the “televangelist” Jim Bakker, who tried to create a
religious empire, and a prostitute hired by a pimping savings and loan director. According
to Fromm, capitalist societies treat each person as a “thing, an investment to be
manipulated” (51). But in immunizing the alienated from guilt, Fromm marginalizes
them as unhealthy. These are easy cases for Frommians, for they see power not as capillary
and hidden, but as open and one directional. To escape, one must rely on Fromm’s
optimism about humanity to save us from ourselves.
Polly Radosh’s essay relates constructions of masculine identity to the problem of
crime in the US. This essay is one of the more interesting, but it is equally problematic.
Culture, she curiously asserts, restrains women, but not men (62). If women commit fewer
crimes than men because maternal thinking is the “antithesis of the competitive,
aggressive, destructive thinking endemic to either patriarchy or crime” (75), then
why do women – who, Radosh writes, “are attuned to the concept of mothers’
love” (73) – commit crime? Radosh believes that “economic needs, fears of
economic insecurity,” or “escape through drugs from the pains of economic
insecurity” (69) explains female crime. Remarkably, Radosh does not explore the class
implications here. Moreover, the problem with this binary and essentialist approach to
human nature is that it equates crime only with man’s nature, thereby denying men the
same excuses when they commit crime – unless the class problem trumps man’s
nature, a point Radosh also does not explore.
Kevin Anderson’s essay situates Fromm’s thought within the critical tradition of
German sociology and psychology. He gives an extended description of the Central European
school of psychoanalytic criminology and explains Fromm’s three criminological
essays. Unlike the other essayists, Anderson discusses Fromm’s differences with
Freud, Marx, Rusche and Kirschheimer and Foucault. Regrettably, Anderson doesn’t
fully give these critics their due; they speak on his terms, not their own, but the essay
is thorough and engaging all the same.
Fromm’s short essay, “The State as Educator,” relies on neo-Freudian
insights into instinctual renunciation to explain “the subordination of the masses to
the ruling strata” (125). This could have been the start of an interesting
sociological investigation, as one finds in Bourdieu. But Fromm reduces it to an abstract
psychological one, and argues that the “psychic attitude of the child toward the
father is the same one that the state desires and considers necessary among the great mass
of its citizens” (125). In the final essay, Fromm asks: “Can psychoanalytical
insight into the causes and motives of crime be of any practical use”? (147). Fromm
recognized that, in the battle to explain crime, psychology always loses to the forces of
law and order. Rather than arguing that psychiatry will provide further insights into
criminal behavior (though he holds out the hope), Fromm argues for its utility. He wants
to return psychology to its forensic roots, as an adjunct to chemistry and medicine, in an
effort to buttress criminal factfinding (148). In a book laden with abstract and utopian
observations about the psychology of crime, this is a practical solution that deserved
deeper discussion.
Cary Federman, Duquesne University, federman@duq.edu
arts.ualberta.ca/cjscopy/reviews/fromm.html
Ian Taylor, Crime in Context: A Critical Criminology of Market Societies
Author: Barak G.
Source: Critical Criminology, Volume 10, Number 2, 2001, pp. 137-145(9)
The Rise of Critical Criminology
Gresham M. Sykes
The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), Vol. 65, No. 2 (Jun., 1974), pp.
206-213 doi:10.2307/1142539
The American Society of Criminology: asc41.com
The American Society of Criminology is an international organization concerned with
criminology, embracing scholarly, scientific, and professional knowledge concerning the
etiology, prevention, control, and treatment of crime and delinquency. This includes the
measurement and detection of crime, legislation, the practice of criminal law, as well as
a review of the law enforcement, judicial, and correctional systems.
Critical Justice
Welcome to Critical Justice, the web-based journal component of critcrim.org. This
site includes writings provided by members of the ASC Division on Critical Criminology and
ACJS Section on Critical Criminology. Over time, content previously posted in a variety of
formats will be moved to this format. Although Critical Justice is not intended to be a
continuing online journal, this technology provides many benefits and offers a foundation
for future site content. We hope Critical Justice will become an additional resource in
our efforts to imagine and communicate the vision of a humanistic system of justice.
The American Society of Criminology (ASC) Division on Critical Criminology and the Academy
of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) Section on Critical Criminology:
Cutting the Edge: Current Perspectives in Radical/Critical Criminology and Criminal
Justice. - Review - book review
International Social Science Review, Fall-Winter, 2000 by Rick A. Matthews
Jeffrey Ian Ross, Cutting the Edge: Current Perspectives in Radical/Critical Criminology
and Criminal Justice. Praeger, 1998. 226 pp., cloth, $59.95.
Jeffrey Ian Ross notes in the preface to this anthology that the individual contributions
made by the authors are at the "cutting edge of radical/critical criminology and
criminal justice." Overall, neither this statement by Ross nor this title of the book
is misleading.
Cutting the Edge, which is primarily intended for a student audience, contains twelve
chapters and is divided into two sections. The contributors to this volume represent a
good cross-section of those scholars and/or activists working within the radical/critical
tradition, some of whom are distinguished figures within the field of criminology.
In the first section (seven chapters) the authors explore advancements in radical/critical
criminological theory. Collectively, these chapters are cutting edge because the authors
explore theoretical territories which have been neglected within the broader field of
criminology (e.g., demonstrating the potential contributions to criminology of the
sociologist Simmel and the psychoanalyst Lacan). - findarticles.com |