Criminology and Democratic Politics

Criminology and Democratic Politics brings together a range of international leading experts to consider the relationship between criminology and democratic politics. How does criminology relate to democratic politics? What has been the impact of criminology on crime and justice? How can we make sense of the uses, non-uses, and abuses of criminology? Such questions are far from new, but in recent times they have moved to the centre of debate in criminology in different parts of the world. The chapters in Criminology and Democratic Politics aim to contribute to this global debate. Chapters cover a range of themes such as punishment, knowledge, and penal politics; crime, fear, and the media; democratic politics and the uses of criminological knowledge; and the public role of criminology. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, and politics and all those interested in how criminology relates to democratic politics in modern times.

1. Introduction2. A conversation with Richard Sparks 3. Authoritarian under-labouring? 4. Criminology’s plausible worlds: Ideologies, crime control, and the practice of democratic under-labouring 5. Public and southern criminologies: A possible encounter 6. Desistance research and penal policy 7. Understanding comparative penality: Some continuing conceptual and analytical challenges 8. Punishment and epistemological politics in Europe 9.Outrage marketing and deceptive campaigning: Populist and epistocratic pathologies of an anti-political era 10. Epistemic public criminology: The fallacies of evidence-based policing 11. Public perceptions of the seriousness of crime: A valid indicator of actual crime seriousness? 12. Dark sides and black holes: A study of criminological research utilization in two sex offender policies 13. Reflections on knowledge exchange and democratic under-labouring: Encounters, brokering, and the collective impact of engagement 14. Different worlds: Police, police research, and policy in Belgium 15. 90 years of criminology at the KU Leuven: Political, theoretical, and institutional considerations 16. What are we going to do now? Criminology and democratic politics all over again

Tom Daems is Professor of Criminology at the Leuven Institute of Criminology (LINC), KU Leuven, Belgium. Stefaan Pleysier is Professor of Criminology at the Leuven Institute of Criminology (LINC), KU Leuven, Belgium.