ABSTRACT
This chapter puts the rise of critical criminology in its historical context by examining the ideas of Marx, Engels, Bonger, Rusche and Kirchheimer, as well as the relevance of the anarchism of Emma Goldman and Peter Kropotkin to critiques of the state. It considers the importance of the National Deviancy Conferences, the New Criminology and the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and developments in continental Europe and the United States – for example, that of the Berkeley School of Criminology – and how critical criminology has attempted to address and engage with the politics of its time. It includes a discussion of left realism and later analyses of the ‘exceptional state’, which highlight the complexities of the role of and use (or misuse) of power by the state.
