Finding Common Ground: Reconstructing Criminology with Epistemic Justice

Abstract

The discipline of criminology is experiencing a resurgence of scholarship that critically reexamines its past, present, and future. This critical inquiry has taken many forms, most prominently in the overlapping work of decolonizing, Southern, and Indigenous criminologies.[1] While these approaches are distinct and marked by differences and tensions,[2] all seek to fundamentally challenge the discipline—how it produces and disseminates knowledge, and for whom it exists. Parallel to these academic debates, we are also witnessing a revitalization of abolitionist and transformative justice movements, which share some of these goals.[3]