Saturday, January 1, 2022

"Contesting Crime Science"

New from the University of California Press: Contesting Crime Science: Our Misplaced Faith in Crime Prevention Technology by James C. Oleson and Ronald Kramer.

About the book, from the publisher:

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.
The Page 99 Test: Criminal Genius: A Portrait of High-IQ Offenders by James C. Oleson.

--Marshal Zeringue