To fully understand the problem of crime and effects on society, criminologists must use what is referred to as a ‘criminological imagination’ (Barton, Corteen, Scott and Whyte 2007). This method can not only identify an individual as criminal but according to Barton, it provides a clear connection between the criminal, the event and the location of the incident (Barton, Corteen, Scott and Whyte 2007). The criminological imagination provides a new way of conceptualizing crime and its relationship it has on individuals socially. One explanation is that crime is socially shaped and that society defines what is seen as criminal (Carrabine, Lee 2009). Arguably, the criminological imagination is a new way of seeing crime and its effect on the world. The criminological imagination according to Hall, challenges existing and dominant ways of thinking about crime and punishment (Barton, Corteen, Scott and Whyte 2007). The imagination looks at the offenders and links them with their historical and structural contexts.
Through the sociological imagination, troubles were translated in order to present the individual with a picture of their own social world (Barton, Corteen, Scott and Whyte 2007). This new picture of their social world offered new values, feelings motives understandings and meanings. The criminological imagination is describe by Currie as
“a kind of criminology that is able and willing to break free of old constraints and look at the problems of crime and punishment with fresh eyes. That kind of criminological imagination has always been a great strength of the movement we loosely call critical criminology” (Barton, Corteen, Scott and Whyte 2007 pg 5).
The development of critical criminology has led to a new vocabulary for understanding lived experiences and therefore signalled a departure from the decontextualized analysis found in much criminology.
Another role the criminological imagination plays is a legislative one (Bauman 1987). Critical criminology has provided new ideas about how not only society but the criminal justice system can be structured in alternative methods. Understanding what ‘crime’ actually is, maybe one of the most important strands in the criminological imagination. However, the importance of the connections between biography and history allows much debate. There must be a realistic evaluation of the conditions of crime and conflicting behaviour in society occurs.
The criminological imagination also installs debates on crime and punishment with a more of a common sense approach (Barton, Corteen, Scott, and Whyte 2007). Such an idea must be self-interrogatory and connect with debates in human rights, the rule of law and social justice. Also, the criminological imagination is able to relate to people’s lives within society and makes possible a new framework regarding the problems that society has. Furthermore, a criminological imagination allows “policy interventions that are informed by structural contexts” (Barton, Corteen, Scott, and Whyte 2007).
The criminological imagination addresses how we gain our criminal knowledge and how the criminal justice system uses this knowledge in criminal justice policies. It insists on an awareness of social harms and injustices and the relationship to the permeation of crimes.
Barton (2007) argues that rather than focusing upon an individual who is involved in crime, the criminological imagination tries to understand the social and economic contexts that produce not only crime but responses to crime. This analysis of crime, examines the individual and their interactions, meanings and motivations of other criminals though these means. However, alongside this theory, there has been the problem of the political and ideological construction of crime and the processes which have led to the naturalizations of these dominant conceptions (Barton, Corteen, Scott, and Whyte 2007).
The criminological imagination highlights the problem of marginalization and criminalisation. The Blair government played a big part in how we marginalized other people in our community. Blair had the slogan ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ (Barton, Corteen, Scott, and Whyte 2007). This launched an attack on some of the most vulnerable people in our society. The Blair government introduced a total of 1018 new crimes in an 8 year period between 1997 and 2005 (Barton, Corteen, Scott and Whyte 2007). The introduction of these new crimes automatically marginalized a new group of people and turned the activities they were involved in criminal. Thus criminalising more of Britain, where the prison population is already the highest in Europe per 100,000 of the population (Walters 2007). New Labours election campaign focused entirely on reducing crime but that solely means ‘attacking’ groups of society that act differently to the ‘normal behaviour’ the government expects.
Mainstream criminology also marginalises black people and women (Barton, Corteen, Scott, and Whyte 2007). Black people, especially young black males, have recently been target for the amount of weapons on Britain’s streets. Through media and other sources, young black males have been targeted and labelled criminals and they’ve been under much scrutiny because they are seen as criminal. The criminological imagination indicates the continued subjugation of ethnic minorities is located within the structure of neo-colonialism (Barton, Corteen, Scott and Whyte 2007). The criminological imagination recognises that crime cannot distinguish from gendered hierarchies of power. Criminology is seen as a very masculine field and women that are criminologists are marginalized. The complex relationship between gender and race is highlighted by Ann smith,
“capitalist formations of shape and are shaped in turn by non-class based forms of oppression. We are never actually confronted with nothing but capitalism; similarly, sexism, racism and homophobia never appear isolated form. We experience, instead, contextually-specific hybrid formations that emerge out of the combination of these forces.” (Smith 1998)
Barton argues that this smith importantly stresses the importantance of developing an analysis of social structure and not an analysis that is based on either race or gender. For critical criminologists, criminalization is a political process (Barton, Corteen, Scott, and Whyte 2007). Crime is contextualised by class, race and gender (Davis 2007) and those that are most marginalised are targeted by other people in society because they are looking for somebody to blame and society targets those that are most different from the ‘normal people of society’.
According to Young, the criminological imagination is exposed to the problems of power, stigmitation, pluralism and the contest of values than no other field within the social sciences (Young 2011). Young explains that up to 60 per cent of crimes that are committed cannot be explained and methods that criminologists are not using a strictly scientifically based model and how to distinguish why some crimes are being committed. Essentially, orthodox criminology looks to explain crimes by finding a reason that explains one crime as a whole and not look and the individual circumstances of a crime. Young raises the argument that criminologists can take past events and readjust their theories so that they fit to what the data shows (Young 2011). However he argues that data on crime is ‘severely limited’ and that data is scrutinised until the data that is presented to us can fit the theory people are trying to argue. Goertzel examined three separate areas, the effects of guns, legalized abortions and imprisonment on crime rates. All found that the data proved the preconceived beliefs of the assessor (Young 2011).
Young also argues that criminologists need to get out of what he refers to as ‘sanitized redoubt’ (Young 2011). He believes that we need a theoretical position that can relate to the real world which is full of joy and fear which can seek to understand the sub-cultures that exist within the bigger society. The criminological imagination allows those scientific boundaries to be broken down and allows members of society to become involved with criminological theories because using the criminological imagination encompasses the society in its thinking.
Crime prevention has always been a big issue, not only in the Blair years but also the Thatcher years. The criminological imagination goes beyond the methods we use to prevent and control crime in society. This criminological imagination goes beyond the restrictive methods of technology (Barton, Corteen, Scott and Whyte 2007). It is necessary for us to discover a link between disciplinary boundaries and fragmentary concerns. With so many state projects failing to make an impact on crime prevention, the call for Mills sociological imagination approach is more relevant today for a criminology that has become neoliberal thinking (Hayward, Young 2004). The criminological imagination therefore can be used to explore the connection between crime prevention, spatial production and social justice (Barton, Corteen, Scott, and Whyte 2007).
Young (2011) believes that all good sociology is critical as well as criminology. He argues that critical criminology is more relevant today than it ever has been. Positivism in his eyes is one dimensional and such criminology disregards the social implications and distances it from crime. It is a ‘white noise’ generated by the criminal justice system and the criminology of denatured causes. Positivism evaluates data to come to its conclusion and it has lost contact with reality and what is happening in society which has been used by on overbearing criminal justice system (Young 2011).
The expansion of the criminological imagination must be able to locate social harms, personal troubles and problematic behaviour in society (Barton, Corteen, Scott and Whyte 2007). It must insist on a dramatic restructuring of society, this would allow a positive and anti-authoritarian human relationships to form and new and morally acceptable means of resolving human conflicts.
The criminological imagination has provided us with an alternative method of thinking about crime and the problems it causes. The analysis of crime requires a focus on more than the criminal law and the orthodox methods of traditional criminology. The criminological imagination provides an explanation for social problems and troubles in society. Criminology as a social science on its own cannot provide an explanation for criminal behaviour (Barton, Corteen, Scott, and Whyte 2007). Criminology needs to draw theories from other fields such as history, politics, feminists and sociologists. Once the barriers between these fields have been broken down, the criminological imagination can continue to present an effective challenge to orthodox criminology (Barton, Corteen, Scott and Whyte 2007).
If the criminological imagination is to break down the restraints of criminology, then we need to think in terms of a ‘social’ justice rather than a criminal justice. The criminological imagination tries to enhance rather than undermine and tries to develop a way of researching that can provide the potential to challenge the interests of the powerful (Barton, Corteen, Scott and Whyte 2007).
Bibliography
Barton, A., Corteen, K., Scott, D. and Whyte, D. (eds) (2006) Expanding the Criminological Imagination Devon: Willan
Carrabine, E., Cox, P., Lee, M., Plummer, K. and South, N. (2009) Criminology: A Sociological introduction: Routledge
Cohen, S. (1988) Against Criminology Cambridge: Polity Press
Mills, C.W. (1959) The sociological Imagination Oxford: OUP
Scraton, P. (2007) Power, Conflict and Criminalisation London: Routledge
Swaaningen, R. (1997) Critical Criminology: Visions from Europe, London: Sage
Young, J. (2011) Criminological Imagination Cambridge: Polity