The term 'post-critical criminology' refers to a time following the period in which a critical or conflict perspective was dominant. 'Post-critical criminology' perspective would accept the assumptions central to postmodernism or deconstruction. A post-critical criminology informed by the work of Foucault, Miller and Rose, O'Malley and Garland, emerged from the widespread disenchantment and undercutting of extant radical approaches. For many criminologists coming of age in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Foucault was a welcome antidote to a "failed" or waffling Marx and liberal-influenced post-critical criminology.
Classical criminology had developed as a question about punishment and neo-classical criminology as a question about the criminal. Moreover, Foucault was embraced against the backdrop of an almost visceral disinclination toward a positive moral position, one that de Haan (1987) and Cohen (1979) had seen in the earlier critical turn in criminology. Foucauldians were Nietzsche-sensitized radicals who rejected the normative project of criminology with the failed projects of humanism and modernism. This is the context in which it could be claimed that critical criminology could be better understood as the study of governance (Caputo and Hatt 1996). - de Lint, Willem, Governmentality, critical criminology, and the absent norm.
The Continuing Relevance of Marxism to
Critical Criminology
- Stuart Russell.
Abstract Since the early 1990s, the new directions in post-critical criminology have
consciously excluded Marxism as being out-dated. This article critically assesses the
fundamental theoretical shifts within critical criminology.
It argues that Marxism remains as relevant as ever for analysing crime, criminal justice, and the role of the state. There is a great need for critical criminologists to redirect their attention back to Marxist theory by developing and extending its tools of critical theoretical analysis.
Beyond Critique: Toward a Post-Critical Criminology, in Post-Critical Criminology (T. O'Reilly-Fleming, ed.). Toronto: Prentice-Hall, 1996: 410-435, (co-authored with Tullio Caputo). The authors suggestion is to replace criminality and the criminal, criminology's traditional objects, with governance.
Schissel, Bemard (1996) Post-Critical Criminology and Moral Panics: Deconsuucting the. Conspiracy Against Youths - Thomas O'Reilley-Fleming (eds.).