Ten percent of the world’s population lives on islands, but until now the place and space characteristics of islands in criminological theory have not been deeply considered. This book moves beyond the question of whether islands have more, or less, crime than other places, and instead addresses issues of how, and by whom, crime is defined in island settings, which crimes are policed and visible, and who is subject to regulation. These questions are informed by ‘the politics of place and belonging’ and the distinctive social networks and normative structures of island communities.
From fine art to popular digital culture, criminologists are increasingly engaged in the processes of the visual.
In this pioneering work, Bill McClanahan provides a concise and lively overview of the origins and contemporary role of visual criminology. Detailing and employing the most prominent approaches at work in visual criminology, this book explores the visual perspective in relation to prisons, police, the environment, and drugs, while noting the complex social and ethical implications embedded in visual research.
This original book broadens the horizons of criminological engagement and reveals how visual criminology offers new and critical ways to understand and theorize crime and harm.
Critical criminological theories and perspectives are typically major components of Criminology degree courses. An Introduction to Critical Criminology is the first accessible text on these topics for students of criminology, sociology and social policy. Written by an experienced lecturer who specialises in the topic, it offers an in-depth but accessible introduction to foundational and contemporary theories and perspectives in critical criminology. In doing so, it introduces students to theories and perspectives that challenge mainstream criminological theories about the causes of crime, and the operation of the criminal justice system.
With the inclusion of boxed examples, key points and sample essay questions An Introduction to Critical Criminology is ideal for students of Criminology because it explores in detail a vast array of critical criminological theories and perspectives.
Chapter 2 develops a critical framework to examine islands and crime, and functions as something akin to a literature review. It situates island criminologies within these existing criminological lines of inquiry, while also taking an interdisciplinary, global, and critical approach to exploring how islandness might further inflect extant criminological theorizing. The chapter initially examines criminological interest in geographies, including criminology’s general bias towards urban life in the Global North and concomitant neglect of crime in island spaces and places, which exist on the periphery of peripheries. The chapter then draws on fictional accounts of islands and crime and attempts to provide some foundations for an interpretive or cultural approach to island criminologies. In doing so, it extends the concept of islandness to account for two broad, polar visions of islands, which are best operationalized through the lens of power relations: island idylls and island horrors. We argue here for a criminological approach to small-scale and remote societies that conceptualizes both place and space, and which centres the importance of power in understanding different forms of social regulation.
that challenges urban and cosmopolitan bias. On one level, island criminologies might be concerned with islands as places and analyse how crime problems are constructed and interpreted in island locales through the prism of islandness. On another level, a spatial criminology of islands might examine how the island geographies produce distinctive social networks, particular normative structures, and distinct forms of social control. At the crux of these projects is an understanding of power structures, in terms of island societies and at a broader geo-political level
