Crime is a distinctly European concept that was institutionalized into the criminal justice system through the penal code, created in the 1700s by founding theorists of criminology’s classical school of thought. In practice, crime is a concept that limits what can be defined as harmful and violent. Written at the height of Europe’s genocidal colonial wars and chattel slavery, the penal code excluded, and continues to exclude mass atrocities and violations committed through these institutions. Since criminal justice institutions were birthed through and spread by Western Europe’s colonial wars around the globe, the study of colonialism, crime, and social control requires a re-evaluation of the pillars of Western European thought and the peculiar colonizing economies and punitive praxis that produced the criminal justice system. Through an anticolonial, genealogical framework scholars and researchers can better locate criminal justice institutions, practices, and concepts within their colonial contexts, allowing for a more thorough understanding of how history, power, politics, and economy shape crime and practice social control in the 21st century.
At the core of an anticolonial study of crime and social control is an understanding that Europe’s crime-concept depends upon institutionalized constructions of dangerousness for colonized people and nations, and lack thereof, for colonizing people and nations. Dangerousness, as defined by colonial renditions of race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, nation, and so forth, anchors the cultural and implemented processes of criminalization; as a result, proper and comprehensive deconstructions of colonizing definitions of dangerousness require an intersectional understanding of power and oppression. Therefore, an effective framework for the study of colonialism, crime, and social control necessitates a re-evaluation and re-articulation of the following questions: what is colonialism?; what is crime?; what is colonial social control?; and what is criminology’s relationship to colonialism?
Article
Colonialism, Crime, and Social Control
Viviane Saleh-Hanna
Article
Critical Criminologies
Walter S. DeKeseredy
There is no single critical criminology. Rather, there are critical criminologies with different histories, methods, theories, and political perspectives. However, critical criminology is often defined as a perspective that views the major sources of crime as the unequal class, race/ethnic, and gender relations that control our society. Critical criminologists oppose prisons and other draconian means of social control. Their main goal is major radical and cultural change, but they recognize that these transitions will not occur in the current neoliberal era. Hence, most critical criminologists propose short-term anticrime policies and practices and fundamental social, economic, and political transformations, such as a change from a capitalist economy to one based on more socialist principles.
Article
Global Commercial and Sexual Exploitation of Children
Julie Anne Laser-Maira, Charles E. Hounmenou, and Donna Peach
The term commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) refers to the for-profit sexual exploitation of children and youth through buying, trading, or selling sexual acts. CSEC is a subset of children and youth who are victims of human trafficking or trafficking in persons (TIP). The Stockholm Declaration defines CSEC as a form of coercion and violence against children that amounts to forced labor and a contemporary form of slavery; there are many forms of CSEC, including child prostitution, child marriage, early marriage, forced marriage, temporary marriage, mail-order brides, child labor, child servitude, domestic servitude, begging, massage, sex tourism, child pornography, online streaming of sexual abuse, sexual extortion of children, and sexual solicitation of children. Not all experiences of sexual servitude are globally recognized. It is critical to explore the concepts of race, inequality, power, culture, and globalization and how they impact the commercial sexual exploitation of children.
Article
Global Development and Crime
Mahesh K. Nalla, Gregory J. Howard, and Graeme R. Newman
One common claim about crime is that it is driven in particular ways by development. Whereas the classic civilization thesis asserts that development will yield declining crime rates, the conflict tradition in criminology as well as the modernization school expect rises in crime rates, although for different reasons. Notwithstanding a raft of empirical investigations into the matter, an association between development and crime has not been consistently demonstrated. The puzzling results in the literature may be owing to the challenges in conceptualizing and operationalizing development. They are also almost certainly attributable to the serious problems related to the cross-national measurement of crime. Given the current state of knowledge and the prospects for future research, evidence reportedly bearing on the development and crime relationship should be received with ample caution and skepticism. Refinements in measurement practices and research strategies may remedy the extant situation, but for now the relationship between development and crime is an open and complicated question.
Article
Moral Panics and Folk Devils
Nachman Ben-Yehuda
Moral panics refer to cultural and social situations where heightened and exaggerated attention is given to a moral issue, accompanied by inflated demands to activate and practice steps to control what is portrayed as the challenging and threatening danger to morality. The nature of the threatening challenge materializes characteristically with the emergence of increased anxiety and fear from the moral threat to the well-being and future of a culture, or part of it. Down-to-earth representatives of such threats are epitomized by folk devils. These folk devils can be drug users, those who supposedly practice witchcraft or Satanism, sex traffickers, drivers involved in hit and run car accidents, muggers, AIDS carriers, terrorists, immigrants, asylum seekers, and—obviously—criminals. The concept of moral panics left its convenient zone in sociology and criminology to become extremely popular. It has been applied to such diverse fields as global warming, child sexual abuse, trafficking in women, soccer hooliganism, 9/11, and more. Many panics are short-lived, but such panics can also linger for longer periods. Moral panics are comprised of five basic building blocks: disproportionality in portraying the moral threat and the requested responses, concern about an issue, consensus regarding the threat, and hostility towards the folk devils. Moral panics do not stand alone and need to be understood within larger cultural and social processes composed of negotiations, struggles, and conflicts focused on moral codes. Indeed, while folk devils are typically vilified, stigmatized, and deviantized, complex cultures also enable folk devils to fight back. Moral panics are thus significant and important occurrences in the social construction of moral boundaries. These panics represent reactions, counter-reactions, and moral challenges—presented by folk devils—to cultural cores, which form central symbolic structures of cultures and societies.
Article
Virtual Currency, Cryptoassets, and Cybercrime
Tessa Cole and R.V. Gundur
Cryptoassets, particularly cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens, which are underwritten by distributed ledger technology, have become an increasing focus of financial institutions, investors, government regulators, and criminal actors. Colloquially known as “crypto,” cryptoassets represent a small proportion of value in financial systems around the world. Nonetheless, cryptoassets represent a potentially disruptive force and are, in their own right, a financial ecosystem. Cryptocurrency, specifically, has a variety of properties that are appealing to both licit and illicit actors: It is, generally, pseudonymous and irrevocable, and its transactions do not necessarily require a third party. Despite these features, the value of cryptocurrency has been volatile, and even though one, bitcoin, has been adopted as legal tender in two countries, cryptocurrency has not replaced fiat currency or become part of most people’s financial experiences.
Crime related to cryptocurrency has increased with its proliferation and appreciation, with victims’ losses being in the tens of billions and increasing on an annual basis. Cybercriminals steal both cryptocurrency outright and the resources to “mine” it. Extortionists, such as ransomware operators and online blackmailers, may request cryptocurrency for payment, since cryptocurrency can be difficult to trace. Fraudsters defraud people by taking advantage of low-information environments, increasing interest in cryptocurrency, and consumers’ fear of missing out on the “next big thing.” These frauds include misinformation campaigns that convince investors to buy into bogus projects, the manipulation of cryptocurrency and nonfungible token projects, and the mimicking of legitimate projects to convince people to send their investments to scammers and not to legitimate technologists’ accounts.
As the losses related to, and volume of, cryptocurrency and victimization in cryptoasset-related crime have increased, so too has the attention that governments pay to cryptoassets and cryptoasset service providers (CASPs). However, regulating cryptoassets is difficult, but not impossible, although decentralized finance presents its own challenges. Most cryptocurrency users make use of centralized CASPs. Moreover, the Financial Stability Board and the Financial Action Task Force have issued guidance regarding the regulation of cryptocurrency and cryptoassets. Uptake of these suggestions has been uneven but is increasing. Even so, capacity to investigate crimes and cryptocurrency is limited; however, there is broad recognition that governments must develop public–private partnerships to approach a semblance of oversight.
