Towards a Criminology of the Domestic
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| Author | MICHAEL ROWE,PAMELA DAVIES |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12362 |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
The Howard Journal Vol59 No 2. June 2020 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12362
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 143–157
Towards a Criminology of the
Domestic
PAMELA DAVIES and MICHAEL ROWE
Professors of Criminology, Northumbria University
Abstract: Criminology has paid insufficient attention to the ‘domestic’ arena, as a locale
that is being reconfigured through technological and social developments in ways that
requireus to reconsider offending and victimisation. This article addresses this lacuna. We
take up Campbell’s (2016) challenge that criminology needs to develop more sophisticated
models of place and space, particularly in relation to changing patterns of consumption
and leisure activity and the opportunities to offend in relation to these from within the
domestic arena.
Keywords: domestic; home; relational; technological and social change
Criminological theory and empirical work have drawn upon concepts of
space and place across the history of the discipline and many of its tradi-
tions. Important and useful though much of this work is, we argue that
there has been a problematic tendency to focus largely or entirely on the
public realm. Criminology, we argue, needs to take up challenges from
social geography that require space and place to be considered in more
complex ways, beyond a flat two-dimensional cartography,and understand
the social, cultural, and lived experiences that give territory meaning.
Technological change provides another set of reasons to develop a more
sophisticated appreciation of space and place, since it transforms sites of
offending and victimisation such that personal and private places can be-
come as criminologically significant as those public domains that have been
the traditional focus of disciplinary enquiry.
The domestic environment has largely been conceptualised as private
space and criminology has tended to dwell on the problem of crime, order,
and incivilities in public places and spaces: domains that have been the
focus of criminal justice policy and practice. Tapping into this broader
critique of criminology’s failure to be sensitive to the important linkage
between crime and place, we are proposing a criminology of the domestic.
Here we begin to illustrate how the home and the domestic environment
more broadly is the site and relational nexus for a much wider range of
harms, victimisation, and criminal activity.
143
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2020 The Authors. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice published by Howard League
and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which
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