Critical Criminology

Critical criminology is a broad perspective that examines how power, inequality, and social structure shape the definition of crime, the operation of the criminal justice system, and the distribution of punishment. Rather than treating crime as an objective category, it asks who makes the laws and whose interests they serve. It emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s through the National Deviancy Conference in Britain and radical movements in the United States. Ian Taylor, Paul Walton, and Jock Young’s The New Criminology offered a Marxist-informed critique of mainstream theories, and William Chambliss and Richard Quinney argued that criminal law reflects the interests of the ruling class. Stuart Hall and colleagues’ Policing the Crisis analyzed moral panics about mugging in relation to a crisis of hegemony. Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish examined the rise of modern disciplinary power, while Jeffrey Reiman’s The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison argued that the system targets the poor. Feminist, critical race, and left realist approaches, including Jock Young’s later work, expanded and revised the tradition. Critical criminology remains central to research on state crime, policing, mass incarceration, and social justice.