Revising the Critical Gaze: An Inversion of Criminological Theories to Center Race, Racism, and Resistance

Abstract

We offer a method to invert and redefine three predominant criminological theories from deficit-based to strength-based theories of crime. Using a nine-step protocol, we devised procedures on how to perform theoretical inversions, which include critically assessing the original framework of an identified theory, assuming an opposite frame, listing the original propositions, and applying an opposing frame to revise the original theory's proposition. Our inversion method produced punitive provocation theory, critical environmental adaptation theory, and socio-structural induction theory, as theoretical inversions of deterrence, social disorganization, and self-control theories. We suggest different measurement options for these new inverted theories, including a focus on the structural antecedents of crime such as racial/ethnic discrimination, exclusion, surveillance practices, and divestment from communities. To ameliorate under-theorizing and create a more equitable and less harmful society, we urge theorists, researchers, and practitioners to adopt a more inclusive, critical, and reflexive approach to understanding human behavior.

Towards a Critical Race Criminology: Decolonising Criminological Practice

“…The implications of this orientation within mainstream criminology are bound up with the production of knowledge around race and criminal justice within the discipline. This orientation has also been acknowledged elsewhere by scholars such as Agozino (2004), Bempah-Owusu & Gabbidon (2020), Murhula & Chivasa (2020), Dastile & Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2020), Henson et al (2023) and many others, who have drawn attention to criminology itself as a colonial project. Within this understanding, much of the foundation for criminology as a discipline is bound up with what colonial powers viewed as "the civilizing mission" of coloniality (Murhula & Chivasa 2020: 61).…”

The critical case file approach: A novel tool for critically analyzing mixed-method data as exemplified in a juvenile legal setting.

“…Consequently, scholars across disciplines have identified the need to shift our collective focus from understanding risky people, to studying and intervening on risky systems (Buchanan et al, 2021). However, this requires methodological approaches that allow us to analyze how the JLS and its feeder systems differentially respond to youth across sociodemographic groups to confer and maintain persistent disparities (Henson et al, 2023).…”

“…There are several methodological gaps in current carceral research that impact our capacity to effectively understand and mitigate the ongoing inequity documented across the legal system. First, criminology and corrections research overly relies on studying risky people rather than studying risky systems (Henson et al, 2023). This approach locates the source of the problem of juvenile delinquency (and therefore, its solution) in individual and family deficits rather than individuals’ structural realities and system responses to these realities, even when race- and gender-based disparities are the focus of scholarship (Case & Haines, 2021; Kempf-Leonard, 2007).…”