25th Anniversary Commemoration, Vol. 26: 2, 1999

Gregory Shank, ed. Twenty-eight contributors offer short memoirs, reflections, or longer critiques that commemorate a quarter century of publishing Social Justice. They candidly assess what has been accomplished (or not) since 1974 in terms of a progressive agenda and suggest future directions. The essays reflect the geographical diversity that has characterized the journal’s contents from […]

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Alessandro De Giorgi

Reform or Revolution: Thoughts on Liberal and Radical Criminologies De Giorgi argues in this essay that despite political affinities and a shared critique of “mass imprisonment,” significant theoretical and strategic differences between liberal and radical perspectives persist. mass imprisonment Citation: Social Justice Vol. 40, Nos. 1-2 (2013): 24-31

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Beyond Transnational Crime, Vol. 34: 2, 2007

Sharon Pickering and Jude McCulloch, eds. This issue of Social Justice seeks to lay a foundation for a transnational or global criminology that begins with critical understandings of the state, borders, and crime. Transnational crime and its countermeasures confront the traditional borders of crime control, national security, politics, and international relations and require close attention […]

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CSJ Editors

Editorial: Berkeley’s School of Criminology, 1950–1976 An editorial written by the journal’s board in 1976, “Berkeley’s School of Criminology, 1950-1976,” describes the failed efforts to build “a progressive alternative to what is perhaps the most reactionary field in the social sciences.” Berkeley’s School of Criminology, political movements Citation: Social Justice Vol. 40, Nos. 1-2 (2013): […]

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Dario Melossi

1977, Bologna to San Francisco Melossi, a leading figure in radical criminology in Europe, reflects on his time in California in the late 1970s, his work with the editorial collective of Social Justice (then known as Crime and Social Justice), and the Marxist tradition in penal history, to which he has made significant contributions. history […]

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David Stein

A Spectre Is Haunting Law and Society: Revisiting Radical Criminology at UC Berkeley David Stein, an anti-prison activist, provides a detailed account of the syllabus (including readings and bibliography) of a seminar on Radical Criminology at UC Berkeley, which was attended by Berkeley law students and graduate students in Justice Studies at San Jose State […]

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Defending Rights and Just Futures in the Real World Order, Vol. 25: 2, 1998

Gregory Shank (coord.) This issue demonstrates the interplay between world-systems theory, radical criminology, and human and civil rights struggles. Contributions emphasize theoretical concerns and implications for praxis and policy. Overarching themes concern the need to formulate imaginative global and local alternatives that take into account the shifting sands of historical advances in civil and political […]

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Georg Rusche

Labor Market and Penal Sanction: Thoughts on the Sociology of Criminal Justice The English translation of Georg Rusche’s “Arbeitsmarkt und Strafvollzug” (1933) appeared in print for the first time in this journal. Originally submitted as a research proposal to the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research in 1931, Rusche’s article laid the foundation for the book, […]

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Herman Schwendinger and Julia Schwendinger

Defenders of Order or Guardians of Human Rights? Originally published in 1970, this path-breaking essay challenged criminology’s dominant managerial paradigm and called for a break with positivist, technocratic definitions of “crime.” definition of crime, human rights Citation: Social Justice Vol. 40, Nos. 1-2 (2013): 87-117

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Issues in Critical Criminology, Vol. 22: 1, 1995

Gregory Shank (coord.) This issue addresses the use and abuse of animals in criminology, critical criminology and the reconstruction of utopias, class and criminality, organizational crime, domestic violence, and the history of American corrections. Purchase articles (click on the author link to read the abstract and buy the pdf): Gregory Shank, Editorial Overview: Issues in […]

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John F. Wozniak, with Francis T. Cullen and Tony Platt

Book Symposium: Richard Quinney’s The Social Reality of Crime: A Marked Departure from and Reinterpretation of Traditional Criminology Three authors address the influence of Richard Quinney’s The Social Reality of Crime on their work and on progressive criminology more generally. commentary Citation: Social Justice Vol. 41, No. 3 (2014): 197-215

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Jonathan Simon

A Radical Need for Criminology Simon seeks to “recover some pure strains of the left-liberal criminology of the 1970s,” inviting a reconsideration of the Black Panther Party’s program for self-defense and Susan Griffin’s important essay on “Rape: The All American Crime.” He calls for a regeneration of the criminological imagination and new forms of radical […]

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Justin Piché

Assessing the Boundaries of Public Criminology: On What Does (Not) Count The author interrogates the project of a “public criminology” and assesses what counts as scholarly engagement within this criminological framework through an analysis of its objectives, publics, and practices. In this context, Piché criticizes public criminology for pursuing a reformist agenda that buttresses the […]

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Karen Wald

The San Quentin Six Case: Perspective and Analysis Wald exposes deteriorating prison conditions and describes prisoners’ resistance under monopoly capitalism. The article details the San Quentin Six case, which had its roots in the long history of prisoner resistance, the rise of the prison support movement, and the efforts of the state to smash and […]

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