Marxist Criminology?

[BakuninFan]

I have recently heard of new, exciting things like "Marxist criminology". Short on money at the moment, I havent been able to purchase anything on the subject. Could anyone explain to me what Marxist or Marxist influenced criminology is? Is it like criminology with an eye for dialectic class struggle?

[Raúl Duke]

There's something called critical criminology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_criminology) and/or conflict criminology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_criminology).

These are Marxist influenced criminology theories.

http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/conflict.htm

I took a high school course that taught me about criminology and conflict theory is the one I heard about.

[brigadista]

you also may like to check out critical legal theory [jurisprudence] sounds dull but its good!!

here are some links

http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/Critical_legal_theory

http://critcrim.org/critlegal.htm

http://www.thecritui.com/

[BakuninFan]

Thats a good resource! I get it now!

In conflict criminology, one pays attention to the relation of class differences to the normalized "severity" of the crime, and usually draws the conclusion that the encompassing ruling bourgeioisie (pardon my spelling) is given the upper hand and often contributes to the problem.

In radical "critical criminology", one looks at things like stealing and protest as a means of necesarry class struggle, and that the true injustice lies in the efforts to stop such acts by the upper class.

[chebol]

These blogs (there are more, but I'm sure you'll be able to find them) are quite useful in terms of Marxist analyses of law and crime:

http://pashukanis.blogspot.com/

http://leftwingcriminologist.blogspot.com/

Also (and i don't have all the links handy), try reading Evgeny Pashukanis (http://www.marxists.org/archive/pashukanis/index.htm) (Russian Marxist legal theorist from the 20s and 30s - his work is on the Marxist Internet Archive and elsewhere), and China Mieville (especially around international law, but a good take on Pashukanis generally too).

Lenin's "State and Revolution", and a fair bit of Lenin, Marx and Engels also deal with capitalist law (of particular importance is towards the beginning of Volume I of Capital, where Marx deals with the creation of the commodity form).