Alternative Criminologies

This book celebrates a kaleidoscopic process of permanent critique and a diversity of social and scientific knowledges. It examines complex and global crime issues in light of the many alternative scientific, artistic, empathetic, campaigning, and otherwise imaginative criminologies that attempt to understand and/or fundamentally change why crime and justice take the forms they do.

From cutting-edge topics such as crimes against humanity, the criminology of mobility, terrorism, cybercrime, corporate crime, and green criminology; to gendered perspectives on violence against women, sexualities, and feminist and queer criminologies; to key issues in penology such as mass incarceration, the death penalty, desistance from crime, risk, and the political economy of punishment; Alternative Criminologies demonstrates the breadth, the variety, and the vibrancy of contemporary perspectives on crime, criminalization, and punishment.

Bringing together 39 leading experts from around the world, this collection unites fresh and insightful theoretical positions with innovative empirical research and marks an important juncture for criminologies and their imagined futures.

This second edition builds on the strengths of the original volume through careful revision and expansion. Several chapters include refined terminology and conceptual clarifications, updated literature and references, new empirical material, and revised case studies and examples. Contributors also reflect on significant global and regional developments shaping crime and justice in the years following the publication of the first edition, with the volume further extended by two new chapters: one on Southern and Decolonial criminologies, and another examining criminology and criminal justice in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alternative Criminologies remains essential reading for students of criminology and criminal justice.

Pat Carlen has published over 20 books on criminal and social justice. Co-founder (with Chris Tchaikovsky) of the UK campaigning group Women in Prison and Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Criminology 2006–2013, she has been a recipient of the American Society of Criminology’s Sellin-Glueck Prize for Outstanding International Contributions to Criminology, the British Society of Criminology’s Award for Outstanding Achievement, and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Lincoln University.

Leandro Ayres França is a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Reading. In Brazil, he worked for over a decade as a Criminal Lawyer and later as a Penal Police Officer in Rio Grande do Sul, serving as a Legal Adviser to the Superintendent’s Cabinet and as a Trainer at the Penitentiary Services School. He has taught at Faculdade Estácio (Porto Alegre), Brazil, the Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR), Brazil, and the Universidade de Santa Cruz do Sul (UNISC), Brazil. Since 2016, he has coordinated GECC/CRIMLAB. Leandro is the Co-author of the award-winning As Marcas do Cárcere (2016), with Alysson Ramos Artuso and Alfredo Steffen Neto; Co-editor of Alternative Criminologies (2017) and Justice Alternatives (2019), with Pat Carlen – both also published in Brazil; and Editor of the Atlas do Pensamento Criminológico Brasileiro (2022).