Criminology As A Moral Science

This book proposes an explicit recognition of criminology as a moral science: a philosophically textured appreciation of the presence and role of values in people's reasoning and motivation, set within an empirically rigorous social-scientific account. This endeavour requires input from both criminologists and philosophers, and careful dialogue between them. Criminology as a Moral Science provides such a dialogue, not least about the so-called 'fact-value distinction', but also about substantive topics such as guilt and shame. The book also provides philosophically-informed accounts of morality in practice in several criminological contexts: these include whistleblowing practices within a police service; the dilemmas of mothers about who and what to tell about a partner's imprisonment; and how persistent offenders begin to try to 'turn their lives around' to desist from crime. The issues raised go to the heart of some currently pressing topics within criminology, notably the development of 'evidence-based practice', which requires some kind of stable bridge to be built between research evidence ('facts') and proposals for policy ('evaluative recommendations').

This book proposes an explicit recognition of criminology as a moral science: a philosophically textured appreciation of the presence and role of values in people's reasoning and motivation, set within an empirically rigorous social-scientific account. This endeavour requires input from both criminologists and philosophers, and careful dialogue between them. Criminology as a Moral Science provides such a dialogue, not least about the so-called 'fact-value distinction', but also about substantive topics such as guilt and shame. The book also provides philosophically-informed accounts of morality in practice in several criminological contexts: these include whistleblowing practices within a police service; the dilemmas of mothers about who and what to tell about a partner's imprisonment; and how persistent offenders begin to try to 'turn their lives around' to desist from crime. The issues raised go to the heart of some currently pressing topics within criminology, notably the development of 'evidence-based practice', which requires some kind of stable bridge to be built between research evidence ('facts') and proposals for policy ('evaluative recommendations').

Moral order is disturbed by criminal events. However, in a secularized and networked society a common moral ground is increasingly hard to find. People feel confused about the bigger issues of our time such as crime, anti-social behaviour, Islamist radicalism, sexual harassment and populism. Traditionally, issues around morality have been neglected by criminologists. Through theory, case studies and discussion, this book sheds a new and topical light on these concerns. Using the moral perspective, Boutellier bridges the gap between people’s emotional opinions on crime, and criminologists' rationalized answers to questions of crime and security.

The book examines some of the most important forms of normativity and the relation between facts and values in the context of criminological investigation. In recent decades numerous criminologists have argued that criminology needs to be more explicitly concerned with normative considerations and with morality and this book explains the plausibility of that view and of empirically rigorous non-positivist study of moral values. Hume is often regarded as a key figure in separating facts from values and he was a formidable opponent of moral rationalism. Yet, in his own moral philosophy he sought to explicate the genuineness and authority of moral considerations without endorsing some implausible positivist interpretations of a putative fact/value distinction. The significance of Hume’s view and its implications for the empirical study of morality are explored. The book discusses several layers of normativity explored by criminological investigation including: The relation between law and morality the concept of the Rule of Law the normativity of the notion of criminality the justification of sanction the presence and significance of moral considerations This book will be of interest to students taking upper-level courses on criminal justice ethics, punishment, political theory, jurisprudence, and social philosophy.

Despite a voluminous literature detailing the procedures of research ethics boards and institutional ethical review processes, there are few texts that explore the realpolitik of conducting criminal research in practice. This book explores the unique lived experiences of scholars engaging with ethics during their criminological research, and focuses on the ethical dilemmas that researchers encounter both in the field and while writing up results for publication. Who benefits from criminological research? What are the roles and impacts of ethics review boards? How do methodological and theoretical decisions factor in to questions of ethical conduct and research ethics governance? This book is divided into four parts: Part I, Institutional arrangements and positionality, explores the ongoing and expanding process of ethics protocol and procedures, principles of confidentiality, and the positionality of the researcher. Part II, Trust and research with vulnerable populations, examines the complexity of work involving prisoners, indigenous peoples and victims of extreme violence, power dynamics between researchers and participants, and the challenges of informed consent. Part III, Research on and with police, reflects on the importance of transparent relations with police, best practices, and the consequences of undertaking research in authoritarian contexts. Part IV, Emerging areas, scrutinizes the ethics of carceral tours and suggests possible alternatives, and offers one of the first sociological and criminological examinations of dark net cryptomarkets. Drawing upon the experiences of international experts, this book aims to provoke further reflection on and discussion of ethics in practice. This book is ideal for students undertaking courses on research methods in criminology, as well as a key resource for criminology researchers around the world.

This study examines the ways in which the moral community is "talked into being" in relation to crime, and the objects of concern that typically occupy its attention. It maps the imagined moral universe of the virtuous and the criminal and charts the relations between these two groups in the "history of the present." It examines the calls to action which symbolically endow the moral community with power. And it looks at the character and content of collective moralizing. The source materials are commentaries about crime and criminal justice appearing in selected newspapers across the Americas. The moral "talk" found there is stylized, routine, trivial and occasionally dramatic. It looks nothing like the weightier renderings of morality that derive from the reconstruction of a particular "ethic" or from the systematic probing of values and moral reasoning. And its fuzzy, offhand, unexceptional and frequently unsystematic nature makes it a difficult candidate for explaining either stability or change in crime policies. But moral talk has intrinsic importance as the creator and sustainer of an imagined moral community, a community that symbolizes the existence and vigor of morality itself and confers a crucially important identity on its self-proclaimed members. And moral talk reveals inherent intersections between normative, empirical and technical discourses, highlighting the relationships between morality, science and social engineering. Thus, a prosaic, instrumental, model of morality is particularly strong in North America, but only found in a more abstract form in Latin America, where it sits alongside a stirring vision of morality, more directly anchored in virtue. Research on social problems, moral panics and the sociology of morality has largely overlooked the type of moral discourse studied here. While emphasizing the culturally contingent nature of the findings, the conclusion reflects on their significance for understanding the nature of moralizing, the artifacts of talk and the construction of identity.

Political leaders and the popular press tell us that society is in the grip of a moral crisis. ‘Where have our values gone?’ our newspapers scream at us. ‘Benefit scroungers’, ‘greedy bankers’, ‘intrusive journalists’, ‘have-a-go rioters’, political scandals and criminals of all shapes and sizes are continually cited as evidence that we live in a modern-day Gomorrah. Criminologists have studied this in several ways, including: media representations of crime, mass incarceration, hooliganism and the exercise of power and control through communities. What criminologists have not studied is the place of morality in shaping public debate about understanding crime and how this then shapes crime control strategies. Rather than dismiss statements about community breakdown, ‘broken society’ and irresponsibility as ideological, self-justificatory rhetoric, what happens when we take these claims seriously? What do they tell us about the causes of crime? How do they shape the crime control agenda? How else might we begin to understand and explain the relationship between crime and society? Navigating between criminological concerns about control and governance and social theories about culture and identity, this book explores what is meant by crime, community and morality and puts this meaning to the test. Discussion of a new theory of rule-breaking, combined with an analysis of how our justice system is becoming maladapted, makes this essential reading for criminologists around the globe, as well as those general readers interested in the causes of crime.

Essay from the year 2000 in the subject Law - Criminal process, Criminology, Law Enforcement, grade: 2 (B), University of Newcastle upon Tyne (Law School), 7 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Criminology is not a typical law discipline. It can be referred to as an interdisciplinary subject dealing a lot with sociology, psychology, statistics, medicine, economics, political science and geography. It is concerned with a body of knowledge about crime as a social phenomenon. A broad definition would be that crime is behaviour that breaks the law. The studies of crime are supposed to include in their scope describing, analysing and explaining the behaviour of state penal law. This seems to make criminology a rather analytical subject. But is it therefore really valuefree and, if not, should or can it ever be? If we speak of values, we mean emotional attitudes in a subjective way of seeing things as well as moral values. This examination shall basically be focused on the influence of emotional attitudes and if criminology can be free from opinions and subjective views. In some way this is the personal reflection of moral values, too. Specifying the question it should be asked if criminology is or can be practised and used in an objective and neutral way.