Towards a Critical Race Criminology: Decolonising Criminological Practice

Abstract

This article presents a rationale and strategy for bringing urgent attention to ‘minority’, ‘excluded’, and ‘marginalised’ perspectives within contemporary mainstream criminology. Russell (2022) has previously called for the development of ‘Black criminology’, whilst Phillips and Bowling (2003) further argued that there is a need to develop ‘minority perspectives’ within mainstream criminology. In allyship with these traditions, this article applies a Critical Race Theory lens to provide a rationale for a new criminological perspective presented here as Critical Race Criminology (CRC). CRC is applied here to demonstrate the necessity for centring on ‘race and the racialization of crime’ within the discipline of criminology specifically, and within a global context more widely. It further calls for the development and articulation of a ‘counter narrative’ around race and crime within the discipline of criminology itself. Achieving this requires transcending the binary of the Global North–South divide, moving towards a unifying ‘Critical Race Criminology’ (CRC).