Contesting Crime Science

In this eye-opening critique, Ronald Kramer and James C. Oleson interrogate the promises of crime science and target our misplaced faith in technology as the solution to criminality. This book deconstructs crime science's most prominent manifestations—biological, actuarial, security, and environmental sciences. Rather than holding the technological keys to crime's resolution, crime sciences inscribe criminality on particular bodies and constitute a primary resource for the conceptualization of crime that many societies take for granted. Crime science may strive to reduce crime, but in doing so, it reproduces power asymmetries, creates profit motives, undermines important legal concepts, instantiates questionable practices, and forces open new vistas of deviant activity.

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

   Introduction
1. A Brief Sketch of Crime Science and Its Limits

2. Biological Crime Science
   Identification and Biosocial Criminology
   
3. Actuarial Science
   Crime Control as a Risky Business
   
4. Security Science
   Cartographies of Crime, States of Exception,
   and the Twilight of Liberty
   
5. Environmental Crime Science
   Missing the Forest for the Acronyms
   
   Conclusion
   
Notes
Bibliography
Index