![handle is hein.journals/ctlcrm27 and id is 1 raw text is: Critical Criminology (2019) 27:1-4
https://doi.org/1 0.1007/s10612-019-09448-6
Editor's Introduction to the Special Issue:Crucial Critical
Criminologies-Revisited and Extended
Avi Brisman'23
Published online: 27 April 2019
© Springer Nature B.V. 2019
I begin this Introduction-my first as Editor-in-Chief of Critical Criminology: An Interna-
tional Journal-with an observation, a confession and an expression of hope.
First, the observation: this era is riddled with rabid corporate greed, interpersonal vio-
lence, corporate crime, numerous assaults on indigenous sovereignty and the environment,
international racist and xenophobic state policies thinly disguised as national security
measures, and widespread sexism and homophobia.
Second, the confession: I cannot claim authorship of the words in the previous sentence.
Rather, I lifted them verbatim from the first paragraph of Walter S. DeKeseredy and Mar-
tin D. Schwartz's 2013 article, Confronting Progressive Retreatism and Minimalism: The
Role of a New Left Realist Approach. Unfortunately, DeKeseredy and Schwartz's assess-
ment is as apropos in 2019 as in 2013. Fortunately, in the years since their less-than-san-
guine description, a growing number of critical criminological scholars have attempted-
often in the pages of this journal-to challenge and contest the structures and systems of
oppression that have perpetuated such inequalities.
Borrowing from Raymond J. Michalowski's article in the first issue of this journal under
this name,' I conceptualize critical criminology as entailing or as being characterized by
an insistence that criminological inquiry move beyond the boundaries imposed by legalis-
tic definitions of crime and by its critique of domination-its unapologetic[] . . . com-
mitment to confronting racism, sexism, working class oppression and US neo-colonialism
(1996: 11, 12; see also Brisman 2011: 56). And so my hope is that the forthcoming vol-
umes and issues under my editorial command continue in this counter-hegemonic spirit.
Six years ago, my predecessor, David Kauzlarich, kicked off his tenure as Editor-in-
Chief with a special issue entitled Crucial Critical Criminology (Volume 21, Issue
Critical Criminology: An International Journal is an extension of the defunct Journal of Human Justice
(JHJ). The first volume of JHJ was published in 1989. The inaugural issue of Critical Criminology: An
International Journal was published as Volume 7, Number 1, in Spring 1996.
E Avi Brisman
avi.brisman @eku.edu; avi.brisman@newcastle.edu.au
School of Justice Studies, College of Justice and Safety, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond,
KY, USA
2 School of Justice, Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD,
Australia
3 Newcastle Law School, Faculty of Business and Law, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW,
Australia
Springer](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/ctlcrm27&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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