On an entrepreneurial criminology of mass political violence

Contact and Compromise

“…In demarcating the discipline of criminology, Sutherland and Cressey (1960:4) provided the most widely accepted definition of crime: “behavior in violation of the criminal law.” 1 By this definition, acts of political violence committed against civilian populations—including, but not limited to, terrorism, genocide, apartheid, population displacement, and the destruction of residential settlements—are crimes and fall with the domain of criminology, because they violate national and international criminal laws (Maier-Katkin, Mears, and Benard 2009). Emphasizing this, Hagan and colleagues (2005:555-56) appealed to criminologists “to initiate the study of genocide and of other war crimes and crimes against humanity.” Heeding this call, criminologists have developed a rapidly expanding literature on the causes of political violence (Carrier and Park 2013; Dugan and Chenoweth 2012; Lafree, Dugan, and Korte 2009; Mullins 2011; Mullins and Young 2012; Olusanya 2013; Winton 2011) and public support for political attacks (Holt and Kilger 2012; LaFree and Morris 2012). Indeed, the theme for the 2013 meeting of the American Society of Criminology—“Expanding the Core: Neglected Crimes, Groups, Causes, and Policy Approaches”—was selected in part because of a wide agreement that the discipline should focus more attention on harmful acts not traditionally thought of as crimes, “including acts committed by states” (Agnew, Brezina, and Sharp 2013:3).…”