The State of the Criminology of Crimes of the State

The first decade of the 21 st century is an especially appropriate time and venue for addressing the state of the criminology of crimes of the state. The interrelationship of a criminology of crimes of the state with cognate areas of criminological inquiry is delineated. Jeffrey Ian Ross&s; book, The Dynamics of Political Crime (2003), surveyed the state of a criminology of crimes of the state, with attention to oppositional political crimes, state crimes, political corruption, illegal domestic surveillance, human rights violations, state violence, and state-corporate crime. Most criminologists involved with the study of crimes of the state have principally been associated with some strain of conflict, radical, or critical criminology. Beyond the disputes fixated on standards used, and definitional issues of crimes of the state, other sources of resistance to a criminology of the state continue to impede the development of this field of inquiry.