3 results
Foreword
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- By Shadd Maruna
- Edited by Andrew Millie, Edge Hill University
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- Book:
- Criminology and Public Theology
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 17 April 2021
- Print publication:
- 11 November 2020, pp xiii-xvi
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Summary
This is the second major cross-disciplinary work produced by Andrew Millie in the past few years, but it is neither a sequel nor a prequel; it is something altogether different and indeed radical. As he demonstrated in his last publication, Philosophical Criminology (2016), Millie is an expert at unearthing the roots of criminological debates in older disciplinary fields. In that previous book, he reflected on the philosophical origins of so many of the contemporary debates happening in the field, illuminating and complicating criminological arguments.
In this second volume, inspired by the previous one, contributors explore links and overlaps with the related but rather more controversial field of public theology, specifically Christian theology. Here, Millie finds something even more deeply buried in the criminological soil. These are not roots, so much, as bones – bones that were purposefully hidden away, out of sight, meant to be forgotten and never mentioned. The corpses are familiar though, even disturbingly so. They are not the bones of strangers, the bones of the enemy or a foreign species; they are family, they are us. How uncomfortable that the graves are not marked, that there were no maps or markers or memorials to acknowledge what lies beneath.
Resurrecting these ideas (apologies, I could hardly resist) is a risky, dangerous thing. The theological origins (and indeed nature) of criminology have been essentially ignored by generations of criminologists. To clarify, it appears from these pages that there is actually no shortage of theological engagement with criminological issues. That is, theologians have long wrestled with issues of sin, punishment, stigma, forgiveness, and the like, and have not missed the obvious application of these issues to criminal justice matters in the contemporary world. This is the ‘public’ aspect of public theology – the effort to apply theological lessons to pressing social problems and concerns. Far less common is criminological engagement with these theological theories and writing, which is primarily the terrain of this thoroughly insightful volume. The contributors here discuss links between theology and criminological theory, of course, including John Braithwaite's reintegrative shaming and, yes, theories of desistance. Yet, readers may be particularly jolted to see actual research by Alison Liebling, Mark Halsey, Lawrence Sherman and many others discussed alongside theological interpretation of the likes of Jesus, St Paul or St Augustine. But why?
Foreword
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- By Shadd Maruna
- Rod Earle, The Open University
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- Book:
- Convict Criminology
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 05 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 08 June 2016, pp xii-xiv
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Summary
In praise of an unusual and obvious idea
So, I am waiting for a lift in a soulless American hotel during yet another criminology conference. It is 1999, I am certain, but I do not remember where we are. Also waiting is a famous American criminologist and two younger conference-goers whom I assume are his PhD students as they appear to hang on his every word and laugh nervously at his fairly pedestrian jokes. One of the students asks him, “Have you heard of this convict criminology thing?” He hadn’t. “I guess they are ex-prisoners who are now criminologists and writing about prisons,” she says. Sceptically, the professor asks, “So, the argument is, what, that you can't really understand imprisonment unless you’ve been locked up yourself?” He pauses for a moment, contorts his face and looks down at his shoes while he digests this unusual idea for the first time. Then he lifts his eyebrows, holds out his arms, palms up and shrugs, “Well… they’re probably right.” The two students (and I) gasp to ourselves. Really!? Then, the criminologist follows this up, “But, I mean, what are we supposed to do with that? Go out and commit a crime? I think you two best stick to your secondary data analysis.” And, with a sharp exhale of breath, the three of them have another laugh at the professor's wit. Most likely, none of the three of them will give convict criminology another thought.
The same is certainly not the case with me. I would go on to think about convict criminology a lot over the next 15 years. I was there at one of the first ASC panels on the subject. (I thought it was the first, but then maybe it was just my first.) It might have been 1997. The room was nearly empty, so someone suggested we put our chairs in a circle. To break the awkwardness, the inimitable Chuck Terry quipped, “I feel like we’re at an AA meeting, ‘My name is Chuck and I’m a positivist.’” Since then, I’ve been to maybe close to a dozen panel sessions that were almost always filled to capacity, and always the most free-wheeling and enjoyable discussions at any criminology meeting.
6 - THE IMPACT OF IMPRISONMENT ON THE DESISTANCE PROCESS
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- By Shadd Maruna, Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University, Hans Toch, The University at Albany
- Edited by Jeremy Travis, Christy Visher
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- Book:
- Prisoner Reentry and Crime in America
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 01 August 2005, pp 139-178
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Summary
Central to the promotion of public safety is an understanding of how and why offenders “go straight” or “desist from crime.” The study of desistance from crime has received an increasing amount of attention in recent years (see Giordano, Cernkovich, and Rudolph 2002; Laub and Sampson 2001), yet little of this work has focused on the role of the correctional system in this process. Indeed, something of a passive consensus has been reached in both the basic science on criminal careers and the more applied research on the effects of incarceration that the experience of imprisonment is largely irrelevant to the subsequent offending patterns of individuals. Farrall (1995) writes, “Most of the research suggests that desistance ‘occurs’ away from the criminal justice system. That is to say that very few people actually desist as a result of intervention on the part of the criminal justice system or its representatives” (p. 56).
Yet, surely an experience as profound as imprisonment has some impact (malignant or benign) on a person's life course trajectory. Most likely, these effects differ across individuals depending on a complicated mix of factors such as age, status, personality, previous life experiences, and the like. Prisons and the people who in habit them are complicated, multifaceted, and diverse. Presumably, the experience of imprisonment varies across institutions, individuals, time, and place (see, e.g., Walters, 2003). All of the above make the question we will address in this chapter – how imprisonment affects the likelihood of desistance from crime – more than a little challenging to answer.