NCJ Number
206765
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Volume: 44 Issue: 3 Dated: May 2004 Pages: 369-390
Date Published
May 2004
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This article critiques the funding priorities and trends of the British Government in its support for criminological research, with attention to what is being emphasized and what is being ignored in the context of a wider set of ideological and material changes that are sweeping through universities and the research community.
Abstract
This article argues that the work of criminologists and the focus of criminology in general is oriented toward an ever smaller terrain of what relates directly to criminal justice functions. Criminology has had little, if anything, to say about the killing, the brutal summary justice, and the institutionalized sectarianism produced and nurtured by British rule in Northern Ireland; nor has criminology had much to say about the social and psychological consequences of mass imprisonment or the socially destructive repercussions of an entrenched and widening poverty gap that is destroying the social fabric during record levels of spending on police technology, surveillance, and situational crime prevention. In effect, criminology has had little or nothing to say about the major issues that have affected people's quality of life in the United Kingdom in the past quarter of a century. Between 1998-1999 and 2000 and 2001, almost every penny of the 500-percent increase in the Home Office' research budget has been designated for policy areas that remain tightly organized around the agendas of crime reduction or the "war" on drugs. As long as researchers compete for the funding agendas of the Home Office, criminology will continue to be dominated by political agendas. Being an academic committed to the critique of the policies of powerful political interests requires finding funding from sources other than those whose policies and rationales for practice are being examined. 87 references