Critical Criminology and Anarchist Perspectives: A Radical Examination of Crime and Justice

Critical Criminology and Anarchist Perspectives: A Radical Examination of Crime and Justice

Critical criminology is a framework within criminological theory that challenges traditional understandings of crime, law, and justice. Emerging in the 1960s and 1970s, it critiques conventional approaches to crime that often focus on individual pathologies or moral failings and instead centers on the structural inequalities within society that contribute to criminal behavior. Critical criminologists argue that crime cannot be understood in isolation from its social, political, and economic contexts. They focus on how power dynamics, inequality, and state control shape the definition of crime, the enforcement of laws, and the treatment of offenders.