Social Censure and Critical Criminology

Book excerpt: This edited collection focuses on the sociology of 'social censure' – the sociological term advocated by Colin Sumner in his seminal writing of the 1980s and 1990s. Social censure has become increasingly important in contemporary criminological writing. This can especially be seen in recent writing on gender and race and also in terms of the way that the state's relationship to crime is now understood. This collection addresses a deficit in the published literature and both revisits themes from an earlier era and looks forward to the development of new writing that develops Sumner’s seminal work on social censure. The contributors are drawn from leading scholars from across the Social Sciences and Law and they address a wide range of issues such as: race, youth justice, policing, welfare, and violence. The resulting volume is an interdisciplinary text which will be of special interest to scholars and students of Critical Criminology and Socio-Legal Studies, as well as those interested in the operation of the criminal justice system and criminological theory.