Critical criminology is difficult to define. Broadly, it is an approach to criminology that diverges from the traditional approaches. For example, the positivist perspective dominates the field of criminology and emphasizes the identification and study of crime causes so they can be corrected and crime can be controlled. Theories that take a critical approach are more firmly focused on, and critical of, our social structures and the way society defines crime, power, and punishment. In other words, critical criminology is all about re-thinking established or traditional ideas, especially in the context of power dynamics.

First, we will discuss the work of sociologists and criminologists who laid the foundation for critical criminology. Then, we will look at key theories and topics within the critical criminological framework.

The Origins of Critical Criminology

Karl Marx’s writings were concerned with the rise of social institutions during industrialization, including the development of criminal law, the power of police and prisons, and the processes of criminalization (figure 8.2). Marx suggests that societies are full of conflict, which is often reflected in, and stems from, the relations of production. The relations of production are the social relationships involved in producing the things we need to survive, such as food and shelter. Marx saw capitalism as the cause of disparities in wealth between employers and employees. He predicted that such an economic system would lead to worker revolt and the eventual collapse of capitalism.

Although Marx was not a criminologist, his work inspired many who were. For example, William Chambliss drew on Marx’s ideas to analyze the origin of vagrancy laws, some of which were enacted as early as 1349. He concluded that these laws were created to force people to work in factories and other places by criminalizing those who did not work. Chambliss defined crime as “conduct that is defined and controlled by agents of the dominant economic class in a politically organized society, to benefit capitalism” (Chambliss, 1964, p. 71). Another Marxist, Louis Althusser (1969, 1971), referred to agencies such as the military, police, judiciary, and prison system as “repressive state apparatuses” as they had the legal right to use force in controlling people.

Another key figure in critical criminology is Michel Foucault. For Marx, power is always connected to economic power and how it manifests at the level of the state. For Foucault, power operates like a network of relations that we are all a part of. In addition to economic power, it includes power in the form of language and action. He argued that thinking about power this way encourages us to understand that power is similar to a building block in how things are made, composed, or constituted. Foucault’s perspective remains incredibly important for critical criminologists because it allows for a more open analysis of power and domination that is not reducible to the state apparatus, law, or capital.

Currently, critical criminology encompasses a set of concepts and ideas examining how crime and criminal justice agencies are used as forms of social power that benefit some groups over others. It investigates (in)equality by examining the oppressive nature of criminal justice agencies, law, and the social practices of criminalization and marginalization. Although it would be impossible and debatable to include all critical theories and approaches in this chapter, we will cover some key works and areas of discussion in the field of critical criminology.

Conflict Theory

The development of conflict theory is attributable to many sociologists and criminologists, such as Thorsten Sellin, George B. Vold, C. Wright Mills, and Austin Turk, but its roots lie in the ideas of Karl Marx, as already mentioned. In his book The Power Elite, sociologist C. Wright Mills (1956) described the existence of what he dubbed the power elite, a small group of wealthy and influential people at the top of society who hold the power and resources. Wealthy executives, politicians, celebrities, and military leaders often have access to national and international power, and in some cases, their decisions affect everyone in society. Because of this, the rules of society favor a privileged few who further manipulate those rules to stay on top. It is these people who decide what is criminal and what is not, and the effects are often felt most by those who have little power.

The belief that social inequality and conflict among social groups is inevitable is central to conflict theory. The theory assumes that social groups are created by economic forces (social class, income level, types of employment), social forces (values and beliefs), and political forces (levels of social status and power, honor or prestige, respect). Those with real power in society are not going to have the same interests, priorities, or goals as all social groups. As a result, conflict is created between those who benefit from the rules and those who do not. In fact, those who do not benefit from the rules are likely to be exploited, discriminated against, and marginalized. Conflict between social groups will inevitably lead to criminal or deviant behavior. This theory clearly fits within the critical criminological lens as it centers power dynamics in society and directly ties these power struggles to crime.

Learn More: Overrepresentation of Youth of Color with Disabilities in the Juvenile Justice System

The following links are provided so you can learn more about each case if you would like to.

In 2018 in Texas, a 10-year-old boy with autism [Website] was pinned down and cuffed for being disruptive and swinging a computer mouse near other students. In 2021 in Colorado, an 11-year-old Hispanic boy with autism [Website] was cuffed, dragged from his school, and thrown into the back of a police car, where he was left for hours, for poking another student with a pencil. In 2021 in Maryland, an officer handcuffed and screamed at a 5-year-old Black American boy [Website] for wandering away from his kindergarten class. In 2022 in North Carolina, a police officer pinned down a 7-year-old boy with autism [Website] for 38 minutes, with a knee on the boy’s neck while placing handcuffs on his tiny wrists. This boy was accused of spitting at a teacher. These are just a few of the many disturbing stories about youth with disabilities and youth of color being mistreated and labeled as “criminals” by those in positions of authority.

Over the years, the juvenile justice system has gone from a system designed to get children off the streets and stop them from committing petty crimes to a system that incarcerates a startling number of kids with disabilities and youth of color (figure 8.3). Studies show as high as 85% of incarcerated youth have disabilities, and 70% are youth of color (National Council on Disability, 2015; Southern Coalition for Social Justice, n.d.). This is a phenomenon seen elsewhere in our nation’s history as well. As discussed in Chapter 4, the early positivist theories blamed criminality on physical and mental characteristics or disabilities. Today, children with disabilities, especially if they are also people of color, are being incarcerated for supposedly different reasons.

In response to the rise in school shootings, including at Columbine High School in 1999 and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, schools have instituted zero-tolerance policies and increased the presence of police on campuses in the form of school resource officers. The intent was to create a safer environment for all students, but the unintended consequence is that school infractions have been criminalized. For example, behaviors such as disorderly conduct or anger control issues can be criminalized as assault. Instances that occur in the classroom or on school grounds can lead to arrest or detention by police officers. As a result, kids with disabilities and youth of color have been swept up in a system of criminalization instead of protection. Even though their behavior may be caused by a disability and not intended to be defiant or dangerous, it can be misunderstood, and the child may be treated like a threat as a result.

Critical criminologists look at issues like this and point to power structures, the oppressive nature of the criminal justice system, and the criminalization and marginalization of certain groups as the causes of disparities in crime rates.

Theorizing About Crimes of the Powerful

Another dimension of Marxism we find in critical criminology is the study of corporate crime or crimes of the powerful (figure 8.4). Criminologists use a variety of terms to describe different crimes of the powerful, each referring to a subset of harmful conduct. The most widely known term, white-collar crime, was originally defined by American criminologist Edwin Sutherland as, “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation” (Sutherland, 1983, p. 7). Sutherland (1949) distinguished between working-class crime and crimes of the elite. The criminalization of both categories are related to capital accumulation: working-class crimes such as theft uphold private property relations and assault upholds the need of a healthy body to work, while crimes of the elite such as fraud or insider trading uphold “proper” relations of capital accumulation. However, it is more difficult to criminalize the wrongdoings of the powerful, and many go completely unpunished.

Crimes of the powerful can also relate to the government. Chambliss (1989, p. 184) defines state-organized crime as “acts defined by law as criminal and committed by state officials in pursuit of their job as representatives of the state.” There are many examples of state-organized crimes, including illegal surveillance, assassinations, and illegal wars. Despite causing widespread harm, state-organized crimes receive even less attention from criminologists than corporate crimes.

Given that nation-states have a monopoly on what is defined as a crime, the harmful behaviors they engage in are rarely called crimes. Consider what is perhaps the most infamous state-organized crime in history, the Nazi extermination of millions of people, including Jews, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the disabled, Roma, and those critical of the Nazi state. The Nazis perpetrated genocide, and many complicit individuals were prosecuted for crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg Trials. However, had Germany been victorious in World War II, it is unlikely that any such trials would have taken place. The victors in wars rarely allow their own harmful behaviors to be defined as criminal. For example, if the United States had been on the losing side of World War II, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan would likely have been designated war crimes, and those responsible for the horrific injuries and deaths of hundreds of thousands would have likely been put on trial.

It is significant that had the international rules of war, known as the Nuremberg Principles, been applied to decisions made by U.S. presidents to invade countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, and Iraq, it is possible that every U.S. president since the end of World War II could have been found guilty of war crimes (Chomsky, 2004; Noam Chomsky-The, n.d.). None of these countries posed a direct threat to the security of the United States, and authorization to use military force was not obtained from the U.S. Congress or the United Nations (Chomsky, 2004; Noam Chomsky-The, n.d.). Barack Obama and Donald Trump also ignored the law. Obama approved the use of force and the deployment of CIA operatives in Syria, and Trump ordered bombs dropped on Syria. Neither obtained approval from the U.S. Congress (Greenwald, 2021). Nonetheless, there are very few people calling for the arrest of any currently living former president for war crimes.

Police and Prison Abolition

Since the police killing of George Floyd in May of 2020, police abolition has become a frequent and popular topic of public discussion (figure 8.5). Police abolitionists argue that public police exist only to enforce social order. Public police do not provide real safety, and instead they cause much harm through violence, racism, and corruption. Prison abolition, sometimes called penal abolition, focuses on the sanctions, rules, and punishments involved in institutional and community corrections. At its theoretical core, abolitionist work draws on both Marxist and Foucauldian conceptions that posit criminal justice systems as part of the social structure and discourse.

Discussions about police abolition have roots in the Black radical tradition in the United States and the Black feminist tradition. Police abolition was also a core feature of the Black Panther Party. The Black Panther Party and movement called for more community responses rather than state responses to transgression and critiques of the violence of the state articulated through police (Jeffries, 2002). A number of Black feminist scholars, including Beth Richie (2012), Andrea Ritchie (2017), and others building on the work of Angela Davis (2011), have been calling for police abolition for some time, particularly in regard to violence against women and domestic violence. The Black feminist tradition recognizes that police often cause or amplify harm to women in these scenarios.

The most well-known prison abolition works are those of Thomas Mathiesen from the 1970s and ’80s. Mathiesen (1974) offers some useful concepts. For example, he focused on positive and negative reforms and argued that it is not contradictory for abolitionists or critical scholars to advocate for negative reforms. Negative reforms are those that diminish the power of the state and the power of carceral institutions. However, he stated that it is contradictory to argue for positive reforms or reforms that do add to the power of the carceral state.

The works of Mathiesen have inspired a generation of penal abolitionists. McLeod (2015) argued that prison abolition should be an accepted perspective within legal studies and criminal law and that prison abolition is necessary for justice to exist in the world. Consistent with critical criminologists’ contention that rethinking what we perceive as normal is necessary, critical scholars and activists focus on ways to undo these infrastructures and institutions not only physically but mentally. This requires us to develop new ways of speaking about and responding to harm and transgression, which is a common theme across police and prison abolitionist work. Many police and penal abolitionist works exist outside the discipline of criminology, so it is not surprising that they have provided useful terms and insights for resisting not only the criminal justice system but criminology itself.

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Licenses and Attributions for Critical Criminology

Open Content, Original

“Critical Criminology” by Jessica René Peterson is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

“Learn More: Overrepresentation of Youth of Color with Disabilities in the Juvenile Justice System ” by Curt Sobolewski and Taryn VanderPyl is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Revised by Jessica René Peterson.

“Critical Criminology Question Set” was created by ChatGPT and is not subject to copyright. Edits for relevance, alignment, and meaningful answer feedback by Colleen Sanders are licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Open Content, Shared Previously

“The Origins of Critical Criminology” is adapted from:

• “Marx and the Basis of Critical Criminology“, Introduction to Criminology by Kevin Walby and Kelly Gorkoff is licensed under CC BY 4.0, except where otherwise noted. Modifications by Jessica René Peterson, licensed under CC BY 4.0, include shortening for clarity and brevity, tailoring to the American context, and combining with other topics.
• “Post-Structuralism: Foucault and Critical Criminology“, Introduction to Criminology by Kevin Walby and Kelly Gorkoff is licensed under CC BY 4.0, except where otherwise noted. Modifications by Jessica René Peterson, licensed under CC BY 4.0, include shortening for clarity and brevity, tailoring to the American context, and combining with other topics.
• “Critical Criminology“, Introduction to Criminology by Dr. Shereen Hassan and Dan Lett, MA is licensed under CC BY 4.0, except where otherwise noted. Modifications by Jessica René Peterson, licensed under CC BY 4.0, include shortening for clarity and brevity, tailoring to the American context, and combining with other topics.

“Conflict Theory” is adapted from “Reading: Conflict Theory and Deviance“, Introductory Sociology by Lumen Learning, which is licensed under CC BY 4.0, except where otherwise noted. Modifications by Jessica René Peterson, licensed under CC BY 4.0, include substantially expanding and adapting to a criminological context.

“Theorizing About Crimes of the Powerful” is adapted from:

• “Marx and the Basis of Critical Criminology“, Introduction to Criminology by Kevin Walby and Kelly Gorkoff is licensed under CC BY 4.0, except where otherwise noted. Modifications by Jessica René Peterson, licensed under CC BY 4.0, include shortening for clarity and brevity, tailoring to the American context, and combining with other topics.
• “State-Organised Crime“, Introduction to Criminology by Michael Brandt, MA is licensed under CC BY 4.0, except where otherwise noted. Modifications by Jessica René Peterson, licensed under CC BY 4.0, include shortening for clarity and brevity, tailoring to the American context, and combining with other topics.

“Police and Prison Abolition” is adapted from “Emergent Elements of Critical Criminology“, Introduction to Criminology by Kevin Walby and Kelly Gorkoff, which is licensed under CC BY 4.0, except where otherwise noted. Modifications by Jessica René Peterson, licensed under CC BY 4.0, include minimal shortening for clarity and brevity and tailoring to the American context.

Figure 8.2. “Karl Marx 001 (cropped 3-4)” is in the Public Domain.

Figure 8.3. “primary school children in a classroom” by the US Department of Education is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Figure 8.5. “people walking on street during daytime” by Chris Henry is licensed under the Unsplash License.

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Figure 8.4. “Logo of Enron, the defunct U.S. company” by Paul Rand is in the Public Domain.