Book Review: ‘Critical Criminology. Visions from Europe’
| Author | Mick Ryan |
| DOI | 10.1177/146135579900100210 |
| Published date | 01 May 1998 |
| Date | 01 May 1998 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
'Critical Criminology. Visions From
Europe'
by Rene van Swaaningen
(Sage, London; 1997, pp. 281, hardback £45; ISBN 07 619 51458; paperback £15.99)
Book
review
This
is an impressive, critical
and
wide-
ranging
narrative
which
will
both
delight
and
divide
academic
criminologists
on
both
sides
of
the
Atlantic
and
beyond.
It
also sets
out
to give
new
meaning
and
purpose
to activists
in
penal
reform.
Rene
van
Swaaningen
sets
himself
the
challeng-
ing
task
of
tracing
the
development
of
critical
criminology
in
Europe
and
to
rescue it
from
the
resurgence
of
neo-
ositivism
or
actuarial
criminology
which
has
gained
so
much
momentum
in
Europe
during
the
last
two
decades
in
response to
wider
political
and
economic
pressures,
and
which
has
received
strong
ideological
support
from
New
Right
American
theorists
such
as
James
Q.
Wilson.
Conventional
criminology
was
taken
to
task
in
the
late
1960s
and
early 1970s as
doing
little
more
than
either
re-asserting
the
free will
of
offenders
or
explaining
their
behaviour
in
terms
of
individual
pathology.
This
unsociological
approach
took
defmitions
of
what
was
criminal
for
granted, saying little
or
nothing
about
the
rule-making
process itself,
or
the
crimes
of
the
powerful,
concentrating
instead
on
minor
property
offences,
many
of
which
were
arguably
the
consequence
of
a
manifestly
unequal
and
therefore
un-
just
social order.
According
to
van
Swaaningen,
this alternative
and
poten-
tially
liberating
discourse
quickly
floun-
dered,
ending
up
as little
more
than
rhetorical
nihilism
as
empirical
studies
of
actual
crime
and
the
need
to
engage
with
the
criminal
justice
system
and
the
real
problems
facing
ordinary
communities
in
inner
city
areas
were
eschewed.
This
abdication
not
only
resulted in space
being
left
for
the
resurgence
of
the
neo-classicism
and
actuarial
justice
in
changing
social
and
economic
times, it
also
led
to an
auto-critique
by
some
critical criminologists
of
their
own
epis-
temological
lineage.
The
sometimes
bitter
debate
between
the
so-called
Left Realists
against
the
Left Idealists was
enjoined.
Of
course, this
story
is
not
new,
and
in
a
more
straightforward
textual
sense has
been
told
elsewhere,
and
in an equally
opinionated
way, for
example
by
Colin
Summers
in
'The
Sociology
of
Deviance;
An
Obituary'
(1994,
Open
Univer-
sity Press,
Milton
Keynes).
However,
van
Swaaningen's
account
is
infmitely
richer
for several reasons. First,
although
not
necessarily
foremost,
van
Swaanin-
gen
traces
the
lineage
of
European
critical
criminology
in
all its richness
and
diversity.
There
is a
good
deal
on
the
precursors
of
European
critical
criminology
such
as
William
Bonger
and
Clara
Wichmann
and,
moving
into
the
post-war
period,
details
of
Fritz Sack,
defmed
here
as
the
father
of
German
critical criminology.
These
names
and
perspectives are
woven
together
with
other
more
well-known
strands
in
the
critical
criminology's
intellectual tapestry,
such
as
the
Scandinavian
contribution
of
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