The Home Office’s Racism Studies Before the Macpherson Inquiry
Revisiting Administrative Criminology’s Corpus
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8401931 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Julian Molina (0000-0003-3334-8807, University of Bristol, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 64 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 896-912 |
| Publication date | 2024-07-13 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal of Criminology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0955 • E-ISSN: 1464-3529 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/bjc/azad067 |
| OpenAlex | W4392410257 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 53 |
This article examines the history of Home Office research on racism between 1976 and 1997. By analysing archival materials, the article focusses on the methodological orientations and bureaucratic negotiations associated with this corpus of administrative criminological studies. The article describes how Home Office criminologists adopted a stance that privileged quantification, restudies and aligning its research with pre-existing policy paradigms of Situational Crime Prevention and multi-agency coordination. In response to campaigners’ calls for racial justice, Home Office policy officials used this research to demonstrate governmental concern, manage media coverage and coordinate community stakeholders. The article argues that British criminology should move beyond dismissing administrative criminology as ‘theoretical empiricism’ to enable a more critical appraisal of the entangled histories of racism, criminology and crime policy
Agency (philosophy) · Bureaucracy · Community policing · Crime prevention · Criminal justice · Criminology · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Racism · Situational ethics · Social science · Sociology · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Gender Studies · Law · Policing Practices and Perceptions
The Problem of the State
Enough of Experts
Model Cases
Antiracism
Racist Violence and the State
Black resistance to British policing
Empire's Endgame
The Macpherson Report and the Question of Institutional Racism
What’s In a Norm? Foucault’s Conceptualisation and Genealogy of the Norm
Revisiting Margaret Thatcher’s law and order agenda
Disorderly cities and the policy-making field
Confessions of a recovering ‘administrative criminologist’
For an historical sociology of crime policy in England and Wales since 1968
Dear British criminology
The Lawrence Inquiry – Incompetence, Corruption, and Institutional Racism
Social Science and the Governance of Crime
Norms and normalization
Community and the criminal justice system
Multi‐agency approaches to racial harassment
Communities and crime reduction
Historical Criminology
The Policymakers’ Dilemma
Brooding Over the Dark Figure of Crime
Not so Tough on Crime
Preventing Repeated Racial Victimization
The Present State of Criminology in Britain
Fall of the ‘Platonic Guardians’
Crime, Localities and the Multi-Agency Approach
Criminological Knowledge and Its Relation to Power
Moral Panics and Punctuated Equilibrium in Public Policy
Expert knowledge and policymaking
The myth of ‘evidence-based policymaking’ in a decentred state
Group Cultures and the Everyday Life of Organizations
From Crime Fighting to Counterinsurgency
A Theory of Racialized Organizations
Legal approaches to racial harassment in council housing
SPSS as an 'Inscription Device
Along the Archival Grain
Understanding the Police Investigation of the Murder of Stephen Lawrence
Counting Things and People
Striking back against racist violence in the East End of London, 1968-1970
The 'Social Life of Methods
Ideas, Politics, and Public Policy
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |