ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the struggle for equality and checking of power is central to republican political theory. It explains that republicans have moral commitments to both political and economic equality and community involvement in disapproving of criminality. The chapter seeks to remedy the preoccupation with criminal justice institutions and to set forth what should be at the center of the political agenda of republican criminology. The worst of Australia’s white-collar criminals have been not only unusually respectable men, but also men who have been hailed as great entrepreneurial heroes. The Australian criminological research community has also given the issue a priority higher than it has been given in any other country. Republican criminology opens our eyes to the limited relevance of statist criminology—the sort the state gives money to—to practical ongoing struggles to reduce the crime rate.
