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Crime Law Soc Change (2007) 48:925
DOI 10.1007/s10611-007-9079-z
From crime to social harm?
Paddy Hillyard & Steve Tombs
Published online: 18 October 2007 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2007
Abstract Debates around the relationships between criminology and social harm are longstanding. This article sets out some of the key features of current debates between, on the one hand, those who would retain a commitment to crime and criminology and those, on the other hand who would abandon criminology for a social harm perspective. To this end, the article begins by highlighting several criticisms of criminology, criticisms raised in particular by a diverse group of critical criminologists over the past 30 to 40 years. While these are hardly new, the rehearsal of these is an important starting point for a discussion of the potential of the development of an alternative discipline. The paper then proposes a number of reasons why a disciplinary approach organised around a notion of social harm may prove to be more productive than has criminology hitherto: that is, may have the potential for greater theoretical coherence and imagination, and for more political progress.
Introduction
There are good reasons why this is an important moment to rehearse the criticisms and debate the issues around criminology and social harm1. In 1999 van Swaaningen, in his analysis of critical criminology, argued that its heyday had passed and that criminology has shifted away from epistemological and socio-political questions and returned to its old empiricist orientation as an applied science ... fuelled by the political issues of the day, and geared by the agenda of its financiers2. The years that followed have witnessed, internationally, the US-led war on terror, with its various implications for domestic civil liberties and net-widening in the name of national security. This has been particularly
1 We have set these arguments out at greater length in [21, 22].
2 [43, 44], passim, and [27]: 6.P. Hillyard (*) : S. TombsSchool of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work, Queens University,6 College Park, University Road, Belfast BT7 1NN Northern Ireland, UK e-mail: [email protected]
10 P. Hillyard, S. Tombs
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