Critical Criminology
Definition
An umbrella term for approaches that examine crime and criminal justice through the lens of structural power, including class, race, gender, and the reach of the carceral state.
Related terms
- Conflict Criminology
- A family of theories holding that criminal law and its enforcement reflect the interests of powerful social groups rather than universal moral...
- Instrumentalist Marxism
- A strand of radical criminology holding that the state and its law directly serve the immediate interests of the capitalist class that...
- Penal Abolitionism
- A critical criminological position arguing that prisons and, in its fullest form, the criminal justice system itself should be dismantled and replaced...
- Radical Criminology
- A Marxist development of conflict criminology that ties crime and punishment to the economic structure of capitalism, particularly class inequality and the...
- Structuralist Marxism
- A strand of radical criminology holding that the state maintains some independence from individual capitalists so that law can, at times, restrain...