Reducing the Crime Problem: A Not So Dismal Criminology

Abstract

A normative criminology is possible which offers guidance on the types of crimes we should struggle to reduce and how. An explanatory criminology is possible that suggests which practical strategies may work in reducing these types of crimes. These possibilities have eluded us, however, because of the excessive emphasis on state policies within prevailing theoretical traditions. A theoretical revolution in criminology is needed to cause us to look in the right places for practical struggles that might bear fruit. Republican criminology is advanced as one theoretical alternative. Republicanism causes us to see that those crime problems which are our most serious are actually problems on which we may be making some progress. A theoretical reorientation might help us grasp the sources of our contemporary successes in crime control so that we might apply ourselves to reinforcing them.

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