The Use and Usefulness of Criminology, 1751-2005

Enlightened Justice and Its Failures

Bibliographic Data

ID9766536
AuthorsLawrence W Sherman (0000-0001-7391-3562, University of Pennsylvania, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume600
Issue1
Pages115-135
Publication date2005-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7162 • E-ISSN: 1552-3349
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0002716205278103
OpenAlexW2138128085
LanguageEN
Citations received19
References cited42

After a useful beginning in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment as both an experimental and analytic social science, criminology sank into two centuries of torpor. Its resurrection in the late twentieth century crime wave successfully returned criminology to the forefront of discovering useful, if not always used, facts about prevailing crime patterns and responses to crime. Criminology’s failures of “use” in creating justice more enlightened by knowledge of its effects is linked to the still limited usefulness of criminology, which lacks a comprehensive body of evidence to guide sanctioning decisions. Yet that knowledge is rapidly growing, with experimental (as distinct from analytic) criminology now more prominent than at any time since Henry Fielding founded criminology while inventing the police. The future of criminology may thus soon resemble medicine more than economics

Criminal justice · Criminology · Cultural Criminology · Economic Justice · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Green criminology · Political science · Sociology · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Law · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses

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