Editorial
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480614568741 |
| Author | Simon Cole,Mary Bosworth |
| Published date | 01 February 2015 |
| Date | 01 February 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
Theoretical Criminology
2015, Vol. 19(1) 3 –4
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480614568741
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Editorial
It is our pleasure to announce that the 2014 Theoretical Criminology Best Article Prize
has been awarded to Michelle Brown of the University of Tennessee for her article
‘Visual criminology and carceral studies: Counter-images in the carceral age’. Each year
the Theoretical Criminology Editors, Associate Editors and Review Editors are asked to
select the best article from the previous year’s content. This year they were joined by
some International Advisory Editors. We ask the panel to pay particular attention to those
articles which advance critical inquiry in the field of theoretical criminology. Qualities
sought included clarity of writing, breadth of ambition and original inquiry.
In the selection process this year, panel members commended a wide array of
excellent articles that appeared in Theoretical Criminology over the past year. They
selected ‘Visual criminology and carceral studies’ over a number of others because of
its methodological and intellectual insights. Drawing together the disparate fields of
visual criminology, prison studies and activism, Michelle Brown offers an uplifting
and academically rigorous view of the possibilities of thinking otherwise. Drawing
on a wide range and variety of evidence, from photos, to testimonies and secondary
literature, Brown develops a compelling framework for integrating the visual into
critical and theoretical criminology.
On behalf of the panel, we congratulate Michelle for her achievement. In recognition
of this prize, she will receive £100 worth of SAGE books of her choice. The article will
be made available as a free download on the Theoretical Criminology website.
We would also like to take this occasion to welcome Alpa Parmar of the University
of Oxford to the journal as joint UK Review Editor and Vanessa Barker and Alessandro
De Giorgi as Associate Editors. Alpa will be working alongside Bethan Loftus and
Leslie Paik commissioning and editing book reviews. We would like to thank Eamonn
Carrabine, who is stepping down as an Associate Editor to become Co-Editor of Crime
Media Culture. Eamonn will remain involved with Theoretical Criminology as an
International Advisory Editor.
In this issue, we also continue our occasional series ‘Debating Theoretical
Criminology’. In this series, we asked scholars a set of questions about the utility, draw-
backs, pitfalls, promise and nature of ‘theory’. How is ‘theory’, as generally understood
in Theoretical Criminology, related to the grand causal explanations of ‘crime’ that fall
under the heading of ‘criminological theory’? Are these unrelated projects that happen to
share similar names, are they reconcilable, or must ‘theory’ be inherently critical of the
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