Reducing the Crime Problem: A Not So Dismal Criminology

Abstract

The New Criminology appeared when I was a PhD student at the University of Queensland. It was the most important criminology book of the decade. More generally, the 1970s was the British decade in criminology, just as the 1960s had been in music. American criminology, which had dominated our thinking in the colonies during the 1960s, seemed theoretically uninspired in comparison. But by the 1980s the Cliff Richards of British criminology were back. Places such as Canada, Scandinavia and even Australia became more interesting intellectual communities for criminologists. Some of those involved in the great British criminology books of the 1970s — Maureen Cain, Stan Cohen, Frank Pearce, Ian Taylor, Paul Walton — actually left the country. Among the others who left were Kit Carson and Barry Hindess, who, while they did not write central criminological books during the 1970s, in different ways significantly influenced the British intellectual leadership of the field.