Crisis in Criminology: Reflections on the Concept of Crisis in the Time of COVID-19

Abstract

In this reflection paper, we explore the concept of crisis in criminology. Crisis is frequently used by criminologists as a defining and evaluative category in empirical examinations of policing and incarceration, for example. Despite its frequent use, the concept of crisis has received little attention in contemporary criminological work. We call on scholars in the field to recognize crisis as an important defining category in criminology. Crisis demands our critical attention as we not only navigate the current global health pandemic and the existing, deep-seated social crises that emanate from our penal institutions, but importantly, also observe how the former impacts the latter. To this end, we propose a range of considerations that we find particularly salient to criminologists in this time of crisis.