A tradition holding that legal and penal systems reproduce and uphold systems of social inequality, developed principally through Richard Quinney's Marxist analysis of crime and law. It reads criminal law and its enforcement as protecting the interests of the powerful and controlling marginalized populations, rather than as a neutral instrument of justice.
Facts
Core ClaimSourced to the subject's own accountCrime and criminal law are products of structural inequality, particularly class, and the criminal justice system functions to protect the interests of the powerful rather than as a neutral instrument of justice. 1 Standing CritiqueSourced to the subject's own accountJock Young himself, writing in 1979, characterized the tradition's earliest form as left idealist, and the article notes this early criminology was never really popular in the United States. 1 Disputed
Origin YearSourced to the subject's own accountThe movement crystallized gradually across the late 1960s and 1970s rather than on one founding date; 1974 marks Richard Quinney's Critique of Legal Order, a landmark work of the tradition rather than its sole origin. Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Feminist criminology shares critical criminology's structural, radical lineage, while its own literature also documents tension with a critical and Marxist criminology that was largely silent on gender.
Critiqued Here
Left realism formed as an internal break from what its founders called the left idealism of earlier radical and critical criminology.
Critical criminology rejects the positivist school's focus on individual pathology as the cause of crime, arguing crime and its definition are products of structural inequality instead.
Developed By
Sources
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