Putting Crime Back on the Criminological Agenda

Abstract This chapter examines the relative decline of criminological concern with crime and takes issue with claims that criminology should relinquish crime in favour of other organizing concepts such as ‘conflict’, ‘dispute’, or ‘harm’. It argues that crime needs to be put firmly back on to the criminological agenda by making questions of criminalization as much a focus of criminological as of legal enquiry. It considers what criminology can contribute to criminalization debates and, no less importantly, what criminology has to learn from criminal law.