Critical Criminological Perspectives

This book discusses the concept of 'agnosis' and its significance for criminology through a series of case studies, contributing to the expansion of the criminological imagination. Agnotology – the study of the cultural production of ignorance, has primarily been proposed as an analytical tool in the fields of science and medicine. However, this book argues that it has significant resonance for criminology and the social sciences given that ignorance is a crucial means through which public acceptance of serious and sometimes mass harms is achieved. The editors argue that this phenomenon requires a systematic inquiry into ignorance as an area of criminological study in its own right. 

Through case studies on topics such as migrant detention, historical institutionalised child abuse, imprisonment, environmental harm and financial collapse, this book examines the construction of ignorance, and the power dynamics that facilitate and shape that construction in a range of different contexts. Furthermore, this book addresses the relationship between ignorance and the achievement of ‘manufactured consent’ to political and cultural hegemony, acquiescence in its harmful consequences and the deflection of responsibility for them. 

This book provides a comprehensive, global exploration of the scale, scope, threats, and drivers of wildlife trafficking from a criminological perspective. Building on the first edition, it takes into account the significant changes in the international context surrounding these issues since 2013. It provides new examples, updated statistics, and discusses the potential changes arising as a result of COVID-19 and the IPBES 2019 report. It also discusses the shift in trafficking ‘hotspots’ and the recent projects that have challenged responses to wildlife trafficking. It undertakes a distinctive exploration of who the victims and offenders of wildlife trafficking are as well as analysing the stakeholders who are involved in collaborative efforts to end this devastating green crime. It unpacks the security implications of wildlife trade and trafficking and possible responses and ways to combat it. It provides useful and timely information for socialand environmental/life scientists, law enforcement, NGOs, and policy makers.

This book critically explores how and to what extent artificial intelligence (AI) can infringe human rights and/or lead to socially harmful consequences and how to avoid these. The European Union has outlined how it will use big data, machine learning, and AI to tackle a number of inherently social problems, including poverty, climate change, social inequality and criminality. The contributors of this book argue that the developments in AI must take place in an appropriate legal and ethical framework and they make recommendations to ensure that harm and human rights violations are avoided. The book is split into two parts: the first addresses human rights violations and harms that may occur in relation to AI in different domains (e.g. border control, surveillance, facial recognition) and the second part offers recommendations to address these issues. It draws on interdisciplinary research and speaks to policy-makers and criminologists, sociologists, scholars in STS studies, security studies scholars and legal scholars.

This collection revisits Steven Box’s book, Power, Crime and Mystification, published in 1983, and considers its relevance forty years on. It introduces the critical analysis developed by Box which examined corporate crime, police crime, rape and sexual assault and female crime and analyses the continuities and discontinuities since 1983 in relation to crime, the state and the exercise/mystification of power. The book explores the ways in which we can see his influence nationally and internationally on critical criminological, zemiological and abolitionist writings today. It asks how can these perspectives be applied to a critical analysis of contemporary, state authoritarianism and the criminal injustice that this authoritarianism generates? Additionally, how can Box’s concepts shine a critical light on contemporary social harms that were not covered in the original book? The collection provides a toolkit for students and academics to criticallyanalyse the issues around crime/social harm, power/powerlessness, truth/mystification, criminal injustice/social justice as well as historical and contemporary sites of resistance confronting the exercise of state power. 

Evidence Based Policing (EBP) exerts significant influence on how actors think, act and speak about UK policing to the point that it is becoming institutionalised. Inspired by the insights of Michel Foucault into power-knowledge, governmentality and institutional reform over time, this book provides a comprehensive account of the emergence of EBP in Britain as well as original discourse analysis and analytical research into the texts produced by EBP. It presents a new history of EBP presented around EBP's story-lines, subject positions and the institutional changes it has created. This history shows EBP shares a genealogical heritage with modern discourses of managerialism and neoliberalism. EBP's roots are traced and it is re-presented as an extension of the problematic relationship in the production of criminological knowledge and the British state. This history fundamentally challenges the notion on which EBP rests: basing policing policy upon independent, robust knowledge. Instead this book argues EBP should be subject to greater illumination and challenge, suggesting EBP is a contestable device that is doing political work. It speaks to those interested in policing, critical criminology and political science.

This book addresses a variety of key issues surrounding mental health and the criminalization of certain individuals and groups by the Criminal Justice System and the impact this can have on their mental health. It challenges the assumption that people with mental health problems are in some way a risk or danger to society (and themselves) and therefore have a greater propensity for committing crimes, when in reality they are more likely to become the victims of crime. It argues that the misguided correlations drawn between mental health and crime, as perpetuated by the media, policy makers, clinicians, agents of the criminal justice system, and ultimately the public, lead to the criminalization of the vulnerable. Furthermore, the criminalization, stigmatization, stereotyping, labelling and discrimination endured by people with mental health problems has a devastating effect on their mental health and well-being and has negative consequences for society as a whole. Each chapter focuses on a specific area relating to mental health, identifying key themes and issues, as well as offering recommendations for improvements with regards to the treatment and support for people with mental health problems. In addition, the treatment of offenders with mental health problems who engage with the criminal justice system and its services, such as the police, prison and probation services, is critically evaluated.

This book provides a wide-ranging, global exploration of policies and practices which have sought to undermine dissent during recent and less recent social, political, economic and health ‘crises’. Examining various cases of activism and opposition from both the Global North and the Global South, and drawing on multi-disciplinary insights, this book analyses the many ways in which state and non-state actors have targeted dissent, activism and protest, including by vulnerable groups. This includes strategies that have silenced dissenting opinions, restricted the right to protest, intensified policing practices and the surveillance of activists, imposed onerous administrative fines, criminalised and prosecuted dissenters, and even killed activists. Fundamentally, this volume considers ‘criminalisation’ as a process that develops on a continuum of control and repressive practices that aim to undermine dissent. It contributes to the broader discussion on criminalisation processes, policing, the rule of law, and the quality of our democracies.

Mental Health, Crime and Justice brings together original and state of the art contributions from theoretical, empirical, and policy-related scholarship concerned with the ways people with mental health illnesses are understood, ‘managed’, ‘controlled’ and responded to. Drawing on critical scholarship from a variety of disciplines, the collection pays careful attention to the controversial relationship between mental health and crime, as well as key issues relating to justice and social harm. It presents a synthesis of discipline-specific approaches, from law, psychiatry, sociology, and criminology, but will also bridge together developments in both theory and practice.

The book explores the relationship between mental health and crime by deconstructing and analysing two important facets of the justice system: (1) the various ways in which people with mental disorder navigate and are navigated through the criminal justice (and forensic mental health) system(s); and (2) how so called ‘problematised populations’ are governed, with a particular emphasis on mental health as an unfolding dimension of social harm.

Unique to this volume, well-rehearsed debates are cross-examined with contemporary critiques about social harm and justice. By considering the multifaceted dimensions of violence to include ‘gendered’, ‘structural’, and ‘systemic’, this book provides a nuanced insight that exposes the controversial relationship that is said to exist between mental health and crime. The collection seeks to highlight the harm and injustice that people with mental health disorders are subject to when interacting with the criminal justice system.