On Imaginative Criminology and Its Significance

Abstract

Abstract:In growing numbers criminologists are discovering the value of imaginative and creative approaches for enquiry. There is now a critical mass of criminological work that engages substantively and theoretically with cultural artefacts such as film, fiction, music, dance, art, photography and cultural institutions. In doing so these works highlight criminology's persistent epistemological and methodological weaknesses. The broad and fragmented "imaginative criminology" movement offers a challenge to an orthodox criminology that is guided by the coercive and constraining bureaucratic categories of criminal justice administration and the criminal law. Imaginative criminology displaces these as the governing categories of criminological thought and practice. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Louis Althusser, and C. Wright Mills this paper considers the movement's epistemological significance and the challenge posed to criminological orthodoxy.

Flying through the Cuckoo’s Nest: Countering the politics of agency in public criminology

“…We then examine how trending beliefs in the "public" and publicity justify the need for alternative conceptualizations of agency in the public criminology movement, which, as a field conceived as "actions upon actions," has not considered the value of not acting. By using our imaginations (Frauley, 2010(Frauley, , 2015Young, 2011), that is, invoking the distinction between these modes of political engagement through the "fictional social realities" depicted in Ken Kesey's (2008) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, we provide insights into how public criminologists can overcome concerns occluding other modes of "going public." We arrive at a position that is open to the possibility that doing nothing is sometimes better than doing something.…”

“…We then examine how trending beliefs in the “public” and publicity justify the need for alternative conceptualizations of agency in the public criminology movement, which, as a field conceived as “actions upon actions,” has not considered the value of not acting. By using our imaginations (Frauley, 2010, 2015; Young, 2011), that is, invoking the distinction between these modes of political engagement through the “fictional social realities” depicted in Ken Kesey’s (2008) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , we provide insights into how public criminologists can overcome concerns occluding other modes of “going public.” We arrive at a position that is open to the possibility that doing nothing is sometimes better than doing something. Not to be confused with complicity, we argue that what public criminologists might label “doing nothing” can itself be seen as a practice of resistance, and that witnessing or withdrawing may provide a remedial antithesis to the contemporary forums about public criminology currently engaged in debates over how best to act.…”

Erratum: On Imaginative Criminology and Its Significance. Societies 2015, 5, 627

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The author wishes to make the following correction to the above-mentioned published paper [1]. One direct quotation in Section 5, Conclusions, appeared without attribution and should read as follows:

Criminology was theoretically and politically relevant as a discipline because it studied this great threat to social order.

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“…The author wishes to make the following correction to the above-mentioned published paper [1]. One direct quotation in Section 5, Conclusions, appeared without attribution and should read as follows:…”

Deconstructing Decriminalization: A Genealogy of the Provincial Offences Administration, the Modern Fine, and Penalization in Ontario

“…Although critical criminology can proclaim to have established a "wider constellation of deconstructionist radical agendas" (Carrington & Hogg 2002: 3), it has only begun to tap into the potential of the criminological imagination and the "imaginative criminology movement" (Frauley 2015). In fact, one can make the argument that while critical criminology may have escaped the individualizing straitjacket of mainstream criminology, it has only itself recently fled the walls of the 'totalizing institution' of the CJS to explain punishment, justice, and social control.…”