Criminology's Place in the Academic Field

This chapter argues that criminology will tend to become more inwardlooking and will lose its vital connection to the more basic disciplines as it grows more autonomous, institutionally and intellectually; as it increasingly trains recruits by immersing them primarily in its own literature; as its practitioners focus more and more on criminology's own research agendas; and as they proceed to publish only in its own journals. The possibility of an 'independent' criminology ought to be regarded as a temptation to be resisted rather than a goal to be embraced. Instead of aspiring to an autonomous discipline, those of us who conduct criminological research and scholarship should work for a criminology that is intellectually and institutionally integrated in the wider university. It advocates a vision of criminology that would operate as a multi-disciplinary, policy-oriented subject, addressing problems of crime, criminal justice, security, and punishment in a variety of ways and drawing upon a range of academic disciplines.