This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Matthews, R. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Beyond ‘so what?’ criminology

Rediscovering realism

London South Bank University, UK

There has been a growing concern about the lack of policy relevance of criminology in recent years. Two influential responses to this dilemma have been presented. On one hand, it has been argued that academic criminologists should become more active in mobilizing points of consensus about what works, while on the other hand it has been suggested that there should be a division of labour among academics and that the subject be broken down into public, professional, policy and critical criminologies. This article argues that neither of these responses are tenable and instead calls for an approach that links theory, method and intervention with the aim of developing a coherent critical realist approach that is able to go beyond the existing forms of ‘so what?’ criminology.

Key Words: administrative criminology • critical criminology • empiricism • intervention • liberalism • public criminology • realism

Theoretical Criminology, Vol. 13, No. 3, 341-362 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1362480609336497


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?