Abstract
This is not an ordinary criminological theory textbook. It is extraordinary. It should be widely adopted by faculty who teach criminological theory because it re-connects our discipline to its socio-historical roots, documenting applications and reform movements long overlooked. In so doing, the text offers keen insights for criminologists moving forward. Mooney provides a deep exploration into the socio-historical context of criminological thought that includes often-overlooked contributions from scholars of color and women. The mainstream criminological canon is more accurately covered by exposing the often-critical criminological roots that have shaped the debates and research agendas for more than 200 years.
This book is meticulously researched, where Mooney often depends on primary sources more common in historical research, as well as original publications from criminologists from across the centuries. Mooney’s aim is “to present the core theories of criminology as historical and cultural products and theorists as producers of culture located in particular places, writing in specific historical periods and situated in precise intellectual networks and philosophical controversies” (p. 1). For decades we have used criminological theory texts that have largely disembodied theorists and theories from the historical epoch in which they emerged; for example, testing generalizable theories typically divorced from their “classicist roots”. It renders these traditions “attractive to centre-right administrations . . . that are concerned with reducing public spending . . . [because] it is much cheaper to target-harden” (p. 78) than to address poverty, racism, and sexism as social systems. Disembodied or uprooted theory thus becomes a device used by administrators to devise apparatuses of controlling specific individuals or groups without having to address the root causes of our modern social predicament: social and racial caste systems (Wilkerson, 2020). Mooney excavates and exposes the roots of our criminological discontent, revealing that the canon of mainstream criminology developed into ahistorical and acontextual mechanisms deployed by modern states. In so doing, Mooney empowers current and future criminologists to understand that political engagement is an often-ignored, yet vibrant, tradition among criminological theorists.
Beginning with Classicist (nee Classical) criminology, Mooney, of course, explores the ideas of Beccaria, Bentham, Lombroso, and others of their day. She situates and locates their ideas into the broader learned cacophony of debate that influenced their ideas. For example, she documents the often-ignored feminist resistance to Lombroso’s racism and sexism. Frances Kellor urged her colleagues to look elsewhere for understanding criminal behavior since her assessment of Lombroso’s work was “untrustworthy” (p. 108) as he failed to consider social conditions of life. Nevertheless, Lombroso’s ideas remained so influential and convenient in the halls of power that fetishize and other large groups of people. “Racial inequality becomes enshrined through the depiction of the inferior ‘other’: by presenting the ‘other’ as ‘primitive, lawless and uncivilized’, colonialism is thus considered justified” (p. 114). Indeed.
Sociological criminology (particularly at the Chicago School) is a by-product of the violent social climate of the early 20th century and extends far beyond the customary nod to rapid social change associated with migration, industrialization, and other social factors. Mooney deftly exposes that ignoring the violent social climate amputates from criminology valuable lessons of applying our knowledge to miscarriages of justice, as Durkheim attempted in l’affaire Dreyfus (pp. 184–189), as DuBois and Wells attempted in documenting racial terrorism and lynching (pp. 190–202), and as Tannenbaum attempted with incarceration (pp. 209–212). For criminologists who labored under racist, sexist, and classist power over their own lives, theorizing alone was insufficient; they actively resisted and rebelled against the systems that harmed them. Mooney examines how and why DuBois responded to this urgent need for activism and his pioneering role in the Niagara Movement (pp. 199–202), and in so doing affirms the commitment that many of our colleagues and students have to applied activism, or public criminology. While teaching this, I observed the responses of my students of color (especially African American students): sitting a little taller in their seats, seeing their own lives come to the surface of awareness in classrooms that too often ignore or participate in fetishizing them, knowing that their voices matter in a climate where many still deny that Black lives matter. Students also appreciate the invitation to Black Criminology to “enable the discipline to move beyond its white essentialist orientation” (p. 203).
Mooney explores feminist criminology’s long tradition of engaging in community activism and advocating for reform. While mainstream criminology mostly ignores gender beyond serving as a variable in infinite statistical models, feminist criminology’s theorizing of gender and crime led to important insights and more calls for action (Cook, 2016). Mooney features feminist scholars who vocally dissented from Lombroso and other “luminaries” of their time, were advocates for women’s suffrage, against domestic abuse of women, and had uneasy relationships with the state. Throughout the chapter on feminism, Mooney can inform and inspire established and future feminists by chronicling advancements in feminist thinking and resistance to patriarchal oppression sometimes perpetuated by our colleagues.
Likewise, critical criminologists also confronted the establishment and agitated for political reform to address social class inequality and to abolish systems of control that oppress millions. Built on Marxian foundations, critical criminology receives keen attention from Mooney, in which she examines the industrialized roots of crime control. Because critical criminologists have long held that to abolish crime, capitalism must be abolished, they are often inspired to advocate for large scale social reforms aimed at reducing capitalist exploitation of the poor and working classes. Mooney examines the anarchist roots of critical criminology, drawing through-lines from Emma Goldman in the early 20th century to early 21st-century scholars such as Jock Young and others. While mainstream criminology might want to tinker around the edges of incarceration in order to measure deterrent effect of imprisonment, critical criminologists remain committed to “instigating structural change” in the economic order because, based on the economic criminogenic conditions “sitting on the sidelines” is unthinkable (p. 313).
Mooney concludes her exploration of criminological theory by exposing new avenues for needed development for theory and advocacy: cultural criminology, southern criminology, green criminology, and queer criminology. The heretofore unacknowledged traditions of criminology are to be politically engaged and to bring the wisdom of our research to the improvement of the world in which we live. I concur: to do less is to leave the lessons on the proverbial shelf, to have wasted our time developing this discipline, or worse yet, to have become complicit in perpetuating intersecting oppressions. Despite consistent resistance over time, disembodied mainstream criminology developed as an apparatus of power. For those of us who routinely excavate and expose the roots of power, how it is defined, exercised, and resisted, Mooney’s book is a treasure trove of criminological history. Criminology did not have to become an apparatus of power, and with awareness and this insightful historical lens, it may yet overcome that association.