Search results

This chapter analyses the degree to which the UK Higher Education (UKHE) Sector can offer spaces for students to critically reflect on topics relevant to activist criminology such as zemiology or abolitionism as opposed to constructing the criminal justice system (CJS) as a natural solution for crimes and social harms. This chapter argues for the importance of this topic due to deepening institutional links between universities and criminal justice agencies in the name of professionalisation for the latter (Hallenberg & Cockroft, 2017). This chapter proposes that to avoid criminology curricula merely reproducing the priorities and solutions of the CJS, it should turn to the liberatory pedagogy of Paolo Freire (1996). This includes teaching practices to encourage recognition of social movements and resistance against harms of states, corporations, or the CJS as legitimate foci in the criminology curriculum.

This chapter examines the potential of ‘Artivism’ for activist criminology. Drawing on a body of work developed since 2016, this chapter explores a series of projects that have examined how an approach to research that harnesses the activist qualities of art could be used to inform transformative criminological research. Artivism is an approach that involves merging ‘the boundless imagination of art and the radical engagement of politics’ (Jordan, 2020, p. 60), and by amplifying marginalised voices, the overarching aim is to effect social and political change. This type of activist art is not reducible to the production of political art – art about an issue – but instead seeks to change the way that we think, speak, and act. In this sense, this approach accords with the principles of critical social research in ensuring that ‘the voices and experiences of those marginalised by institutionalised state practices are heard and represented’ (Scraton, 2007, p. 10). Examining pilot projects developed with artists and producers based in Liverpool, England, and focussed on experiences of prison and probation, the authors examine the potential that this approach has to change both the way they work as critical criminologists and the objects of this study. With reference to the question of a method for activist criminology, the chapter suggests that critical criminological work can be informed and enhanced by collaboration with socially engaged art – a form of artistic practice that seeks to address social and political issues and is often associated with activist strategies. This chapter, therefore, aims to contribute to debates about how activist criminologies may be done and offers suggestions for new directions in this work underpinned by interdisciplinary collaborations and the coproduction of research with those similarly committed to a transformative project.

Purpose: To critically explore the implications of the August 2020, decision by Carleton University’s Institute for Criminology and Criminal Justice (ICCJ) to end to its intern program with the Ottawa police, the RCMP, Correctional Services Canada and Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre starting in Fall 2021.

Findings: In contrast to the negative reaction of Kevin Haggerty to this decision, the authors offer a strong but qualified endorsement of the ICCJ’s move to put an end to its internship with coercive institutions. The ICCJ strategically mobilized discourses of anti-Blackness and inclusion in response to the murder of George Floyd and the individual and communitarian traumas of Black, First Nations and Metis and students colour in its program. The ICCJ did not, however, substantively engage with the ways that criminology, sociology and the university are complicit through the legitimation practices and processes of ideology, professionalization and research in the ‘violence work’ of the state. The critique, ethics and logical conclusion of abolitionism are obfuscated.

Methodology/Approach: The authors explicitly draw on the Black Radical Tradition, Neo-Marxism and radical neo-Weberianism to sketch research possibilities that resist the university as a space of violence work, both in criminology and in the professionalization of policing.

Originality/Value: The debate between the ICCJ and Kevin Haggerty is an important opportunity to critically analyze the limits of critical criminology and lacunae of a debate about abolitionism, anti-criminology and university-state nexus as a site for the production of ideological and hardware violence work. Grounded in the Black Radical Tradition, neo-Marxism and radical neo-Weberianism, the authors sketch a framework for a research agenda toward the abolition of criminology.

This chapter provides a context for The Emerald International Handbook of Activist Criminology. It offers an overview of the small, yet burgeoning literature dedicated to ‘criminology activism’, which includes engagement with public criminology and various brands of critical criminology, as well as zemiology or the study of social harm beyond narrow state-centric definitions of crime. Among other things, the chapter considers the role academics might play in addressing social and criminal injustice, and the new opportunities afforded to both academics and activists – including citizen journalists and media professionals – by digital technologies and social media when intervening in campaigns for justice and formal criminal legal processes. To answer the question, why now, the chapter argues we are currently in the midst of an unprecedented period of upheaval requiring action from activists and academics alike, including criminologists engaged in social scientific research operating beyond the delusions of objectivity and value-neutrality, that is, politically engaged research aiming to remedy not only the absence of meaningful state intervention in crime and harm but also expose the role of corporations and the state itself in prosecuting and perpetuating crime and harm.

This chapter aims to rethink how gender inequality is related to interpersonal and structural asymmetries of power displayed in our relationships with ecosystems, questioning the classical concept of ‘nature’ as something ‘out there’, as pointed out by dark ecology. First, with the aim of offering a joint North–South critical perspective on equality and sustainability, critical ecofeminism, through the work of A. Puleo, will be explained as a Spanish feminist line of thought and movement. This author, rejecting some essentialist visions of deep ecology, sets her ideas in relation to general critical social theory. Second, contrasting perspectives (critical feminism and ecology) will be combined to offer a rich cross-fertilisation between different perspectives and traditional themes in criminology. A common denominator can be found in the exercise of criticism through questioning binary categories, underlying assumptions and social injustice in relation to the visibility of harms. Third, the relevance of ecofeminism for current criminological debates will be highlighted beyond the obvious connections with green victimology. Finally, ecofeminism will be interpreted as a new critical standpoint and as a more inclusive language for fostering the criminological and victimological imagination in order to help to rethink the rules of the criminal justice system.

Purpose – This chapter explores the nature of feminist research and its contributions to criminology, with a specific focus on intersectionality and intimate partner violence (IPV) research.

Methodology/approach – Feminism, feminist criminology, and intersectionality are used to consider approaches to research and criminological knowledge-production broadly, and IPV research specifically.

Findings – An analysis of feminism and feminist criminology in early movement and contemporary contexts demonstrates the necessity of intersectionality to feminist praxis. Feminist criminology, as a reflexive and evolving field, maintains a commitment to progressive social change and addressing inequality. In the context of IPV, this commitment tasks feminist criminology with examining the consequences of historical, carceral feminist approaches related to the over-policing and criminalization of racialized, Indigenous, and immigrant communities. In working to prevent IPV, feminist criminology should prioritize interdisciplinary work and engage broader social movements, recognizing the interconnectedness of gender justice with racial, economic, and health justice.

Originality/value – Through a consideration of feminist approaches to research and the importance of intersectionality to IPV research specifically, this analysis links broader feminist research principles and intersectional understandings with contemporary anti-carceral movements and interdisciplinary, public health-driven understandings surrounding IPV.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an insider account of the establishment of Hong Kong University (HKU’s) Master of Social Sciences in Criminology.

The paper is biographical in approach, based on the author’s recollections and departmental documentation relating to the establishment of the MSocSc criminology degree.

The author argues that for all the practical complications, a distinctive criminological tradition was forged in the early years that has had a lasting influence. The paper concludes by considering the challenges faced by criminology in contemporary Hong Kong.

The paper provides an account of the origins and development of academic criminology in Hong Kong.