Memory as Power: Historical Criminology and the Role of the Past in Critical Scholarship

Featuring a collection of works by scholars from across a variety of disciplines, this book outlines the principles of a critical historical criminology. For historical criminologists, this book provides a framework of how to engage with historical material in a way that is critical in its interrogation, instructive in terms of how the past impacts upon our current (and future) practice, and attentive to the dangers of presentism. For critical criminologists, this book highlights the potential benefits of looking to the past to inform our understanding of the critical issues we face in the current social, cultural, and political context in a purposeful, historically sensitive way.

This remarkable volume aims to model how to practice a critical version of historical criminology that has implications for practice in the contemporary period. It does so by incorporating contributions that emphasize robust, high-quality historical research that nonetheless speaks to issues and problems of premium concern to present-minded critical criminologists, bridging a gap between the past and present through an operationalization of the past that allows readers to better understand the criminological concerns of the present. In this sense, it can be used pedagogically, as a collection of works which model critical historical criminology, and is thus of instructional use alongside its research contribution.

Alex Tepperman is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg and the Chair of the American Society of Criminology’s Division of Historical Criminology (ASC-DHC). His research focuses on crime among North American Ashkenazi Jews.

Paul Bleakley is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of New Haven and Vice Chair of the American Society of Criminology’s Division of Historical Criminology (ASC-DHC). His research focuses on corruption and institutional deviance.