Anti-racism in Criminology: An Oxymoron or the way Forward?

Abstract

Since the uprisings of 2020 in the aftermath of the police-perpetrated the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, universities – and some departments – have expressed their commitments to anti-racism in public statements. While statements are laudable, what matters most is how anti-racism is actualized in our classrooms, our syllabi, our departmental policies and practices, our research, and the discipline of criminology. In this paper, we outline the racist history of “criminality,” policing, prisons, and criminology, along with current manifestations of systemic racism in the criminal legal system. Against this backdrop, we aim to start a conversation about whether it is possible for the discipline to be proactively anti-racist or if this transformation is impossible due to the discipline's historical - and ongoing - complicity with racism. We also offer questions for criminology departments to consider if they seek to actively uproot present day racism within the discipline and the criminal legal system.