Diversity in Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies: Volume 27

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to examine the field of criminal justice and assess how diversity influences what is taught and, how research is conducted in the field.

Methodology/approach – This chapter looks at the historical exclusion of feminist and integrative theories on crime and criminal justice. A socio-legal analysis of how the increase in the number of women faculty and faculty of color has influenced teaching and research in the field of criminal justice.

Findings – As more women and persons of color become faculty and practitioners in the field of criminal justice, then more diverse perspectives will be promoted. It is not enough to change a discriminatory law or engage in affirmative action to hire more women and persons of color, it is important to understand how preconceived biases about women and non-white persons impact who we define as criminal, how we educate students in the field, and how we respond to the needs of offenders and victims.

Originality/value – Research on diversity in the field of criminal justice has focused on historical discrimination. More research is needed on the impact that diversity has in research performed and what is being taught in the field of criminal justice.

Purpose – This chapter ruminates on a range of different ways that the author experiences being what the author calls a “lurker” in mainstream criminologies as a queer criminologist.

Methodology/approach – Drawing on the work of Jack Halberstam, Michel Foucault, Heather Love, Sarah Ahmed, and other queer theorists, the author explores their positionality as a lurker in mainstream criminologies, and policing particular, to better understand how “[d]isciplines qualify and disqualify, legitimate and delegitimate, reward and punish” (Halberstam, 2011, p. 10), and how leaders of these disciplines make calculated decisions about who qualifies as legitimate scholars of policing knowing.

Findings – The discussion steps through some significant moments of discomfort that have emerged in lurking around with/in these disciplines, and in doing the work of queer research with queer people about queer policing.

Originality/value – The author finishes by sharing strategies and learnings that have emerged out of these research and disciplinary contexts. The author suggests that it is most valuable to continue to lurk so their position of discomfort and potential failure persists as a more productive positionality than conforming with the mainstream.

Purpose: To critically explore the implications of the August 2020, decision by Carleton University’s Institute for Criminology and Criminal Justice (ICCJ) to end to its intern program with the Ottawa police, the RCMP, Correctional Services Canada and Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre starting in Fall 2021.

Findings: In contrast to the negative reaction of Kevin Haggerty to this decision, the authors offer a strong but qualified endorsement of the ICCJ’s move to put an end to its internship with coercive institutions. The ICCJ strategically mobilized discourses of anti-Blackness and inclusion in response to the murder of George Floyd and the individual and communitarian traumas of Black, First Nations and Metis and students colour in its program. The ICCJ did not, however, substantively engage with the ways that criminology, sociology and the university are complicit through the legitimation practices and processes of ideology, professionalization and research in the ‘violence work’ of the state. The critique, ethics and logical conclusion of abolitionism are obfuscated.

Methodology/Approach: The authors explicitly draw on the Black Radical Tradition, Neo-Marxism and radical neo-Weberianism to sketch research possibilities that resist the university as a space of violence work, both in criminology and in the professionalization of policing.

Originality/Value: The debate between the ICCJ and Kevin Haggerty is an important opportunity to critically analyze the limits of critical criminology and lacunae of a debate about abolitionism, anti-criminology and university-state nexus as a site for the production of ideological and hardware violence work. Grounded in the Black Radical Tradition, neo-Marxism and radical neo-Weberianism, the authors sketch a framework for a research agenda toward the abolition of criminology.

Purpose – This chapter explores how select “evidence-based” police scholars act as gatekeepers to research opportunities, in Canada, thus impeding critical research that pertains to Black communities.

Methodology/Approach – Using the critical race method of counter-storytelling, the following narrative demonstrates how race and racism may play a role in the collection and dissemination of research that examines racial bias in Canadian policing. This methodology aims to refute the notion of critical objectivity, which is often used to promote the principles of evidence-based policing (EBP).

Findings – Findings suggest that through various powers and levels within both the policing and academic community, a select number of scholars have influence over Canadian policing research that explores racial bias and discrimination. As such, research that may help to develop effective and efficient policing programs to address racial bias, is thwarted.

Originality – No Canadian study explores anti-racist training programs or evaluates their effectiveness. This chapter demonstrates that this may be the result of gatekeeping. The following chapter provides insight into how this is done within EBP circles.

Purpose – Having concluded that the long-term and ongoing murders and disappearances of Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA (MMIWG2S+) people is genocide, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (NIMMIWG) (2019) made 231 Calls for Justice in relation to culture, health, security, and criminal justice to broadly address the ongoing colonial dispossession and systemic, racialized, and gendered violence against MMIWG2S+ people. In response to these Calls for Justice, this article traces Indigenous grassroots initiatives to show the many ways that justice can be broadly conceived and mobilized to address the murders and disappearances.

Methodology/Approach – Drawing on the Unearthing Justices Resource Collection of 500+ Indigenous grassroots initiatives for the MMIWG2S+ people, this work theorizes a spatial approach to justice using mapping methodologies.

Findings – Not only have Indigenous families and communities been calling for justice, but they have also been cultivating justice across the land by building constellations of resource and support. The author traces the land-based activities specific to community patrols, land-based commemorations, search support, and walks and journeys to show the vast resources, skills, and strengths that already exist in Indigenous communities and how justice can be conceptualized within its local and spatial arrangements, and beyond the imaginaries of a criminal justice system.

Originality/Value – Where the ongoing colonial dispossession and systemic, racialized, and gendered violence against MMIWG2S+ people is well documented, there has been less consideration of how Indigenous families and communities have navigated a terrain where justice continues to be absent,elusive, or invasive.

Purpose – To assess the potential significance of the gravesites of Canadian residential schools to criminology.

Methodology/Approach – The current state of criminological theory with respect to crimes against humanity committed by the state is assessed, particularly with reference to any insights it may offer on the gravesites.

Findings – Denunciation of crimes against humanity is the one facet of successful prosecutions that would have value for residential school survivors. The current state of criminological theory for crimes by the state against humanity is inadequate for analyzing how and why those crimes are committed by democratic countries. The capacity of prosecutions by themselves to address the underlying social problems that fuel human rights abuses is limited. There is a need to explore how multi-faceted resolutions can both provide accountability for crimes against humanity and pursue long-standing solutions against further human rights abuses.

Originality/Value – Gaps in criminology with respect to analyzing crimes against humanity committed by the state that are in need of further exploration and study are identified. There is a need to develop methodologies for analyzing crimes against humanity committed by democracies. Further study would have significance not only for Indigenous peoples, but also more broadly for racial minorities who are victimized in democracies. Denunciation of crimes against humanity is the only realistic benefit of prosecution. There is therefore a need to explore multi-faceted and enduring resolutions that are not limited to punishment.

Purpose – This chapter examines the relationship between intersections of race and gender for vulnerability for human trafficking and criminalization of exploitation in the United States that is rooted in the broader socio-historical contexts dating to colonization and chattel enslavement.

Methodology/approach – This chapter utilizes intersectional criminology and historical intersectional criminology as epistemological frameworks to contextualize the construction of race and gender that began with colonization of indigenous populations to chattel enslavement of Africans and their descendants. Overall, this chapter’s approach is a call for contextualization within the study of human trafficking and an intersectional approach to understanding the structures that enable trafficking and the ramifications it has for victims.

Findings – Through an application of intersectional criminology, the findings herein demonstrate how racial ideologies and legacies within the United States contributed to the vulnerabilities of race and gender for sex trafficking predation as well as criminalization for Black and Native American girls and women. The gendered analysis of men and women who chose to become sex traffickers reveal different gendered pathways into trafficking offending and addresses the significance of these pathways for trafficking victims and potential future traffickers. These analyses demonstrate that intersectional criminology problematizes current research on human trafficking and future directions research should incorporate.

Originality/value – Current criminological research has a scarcity of intersectional criminological applications and fewer that offer a critical analysis of structural inequalities, histories of colonization and chattel enslavement, and interrogation of identities in both vulnerabilities for trafficking victims, how they may interact with agents from the criminal justice system, and the impacts of intersecting identities for traffickers and their offending. If criminology scholars aim to use their research in anti-trafficking efforts and policy recommendations, these analyses are vital both for addressing victimization and offending pathways for exploitation victims and their exploiters.

Purpose – This chapter explores the nature of feminist research and its contributions to criminology, with a specific focus on intersectionality and intimate partner violence (IPV) research.

Methodology/approach – Feminism, feminist criminology, and intersectionality are used to consider approaches to research and criminological knowledge-production broadly, and IPV research specifically.

Findings – An analysis of feminism and feminist criminology in early movement and contemporary contexts demonstrates the necessity of intersectionality to feminist praxis. Feminist criminology, as a reflexive and evolving field, maintains a commitment to progressive social change and addressing inequality. In the context of IPV, this commitment tasks feminist criminology with examining the consequences of historical, carceral feminist approaches related to the over-policing and criminalization of racialized, Indigenous, and immigrant communities. In working to prevent IPV, feminist criminology should prioritize interdisciplinary work and engage broader social movements, recognizing the interconnectedness of gender justice with racial, economic, and health justice.

Originality/value – Through a consideration of feminist approaches to research and the importance of intersectionality to IPV research specifically, this analysis links broader feminist research principles and intersectional understandings with contemporary anti-carceral movements and interdisciplinary, public health-driven understandings surrounding IPV.

Purpose – This chapter provides an overview of the importance of seeing personal troubles as public issues when examining the mass incarceration of people of color, specifically Black Americans in the United States. A response to the mass incarceration of Black Americans unrooted in a sociological understanding may lead to victim-blaming. This chapter demonstrates how personal problems are often intertwined with public issues. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the importance of shifting blame away from the victim and appropriately addressing systemic challenges.

Methodology/approach – This chapter applies sociological theories to examine high rates of incarceration of people of color that get attributed to personal problems. The authors based the analysis on previous research and governmental reports.

Findings – Sociological theory can offer new solutions to transforming the criminal justice system to alleviate injustices in communities of color. The criminal justice system has negative consequences, but resistance to accepting new ideas perpetuates inequality and limits opportunity for social change. The authors recognize that policy changes must occur at the institutional and structural levels to expose social injustice.

Originality/value – A dearth of research examines the approach of framing personal troubles as public issues to reduce mass incarceration. The authors intend to expand the discourse on how personal troubles intersect with public issues and how the authors must examine mass incarceration as the typical response.

Purpose – This chapter examines the relationship between prenatal testing, Down syndrome identification, and selective termination practices, and it does so by considering whether the selective termination of fetuses with Down syndrome might constitute genocidal practices.

Methodology/approach – Exploratory and speculative in nature, this chapter brings the phenomenon of prenatal testing and selective termination practices together, and explores whether the increasingly widespread termination of fetuses with Down syndrome fits within definitions of genocide.

Findings – Addressing perceptions of Down syndrome and disability, and integrating aspects of crip politics and definitions of genocide, this chapter concludes that the phenomenon of selective termination involving fetuses with Down syndrome can constitute genocide when particular definitions and interpretations are adopted.

Originality/value – This chapter is perhaps the first academic text to critically evaluate the relationship between prenatal testing, selective termination of fetuses with Down syndrome, and criminological genocide scholarship. Importantly, it does not evaluate individual decision-making practices regarding termination, but instead focuses on collective practices and conditions that work to minimize the number of people with Down syndrome in society.

Purpose – This chapter considers the economic and political relationship between artificial intelligence tools such as facial recognition software and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) identity construction and identification. In doing so, the chapter considers the threats and opportunities to diverse LGBTQ identities from algorithmic governance.

Methodology/approach – The author analyzes public discourse on these issues and its relationship to agency for LGBTQ communities. The conceptual approach integrates research into surveillance capitalism and neuroliberalism with “digiqueer” criminology to map the relationship between digital media technologies, institutional legitimacy and negotiations for LGBTQ rights, recognition and resources.

Findings – The discussion shows that the surveillance capitalist principles of blurred consent and redistributed privacy are underpinned by geopolitical and technological forces that have undermined the legitimacy of governments and big tech companies. LGBTQ community resistance to harms perpetrated through digital media platforms is one positive consequence of the ambiguities of surveillance capitalism, but which also reflects the investment required by such communities to secure basic protections that the general population might take for granted.

Originality/value – Research into the relationship between recognition and redistribution through access to rights granted to different social groups on the basis of sexuality, sexual expression and identity is under-interrogated. This chapter responds to that gap with a focus on the role that digital media technologies can play in securing recognition and redistribution of resources for LGBTQ communities, or the significance of their absence and/or diminution in current contexts.