ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes German criminological writing from a structuralist perspective. Using Foucault’s concept of discursive practice,11 will look at criminological texts as documents that reveal the wider ‘political’ relations between crime, criminals, and the institutions of crime prevention and detection. I am particularly interested in the various ways in which the logic of criminological writing (episteme) and the logic of crime control (theoretical reasoning and institutionalized strategies) interacted. Given the complexity of the interrelation between criminological reasoning on the one hand and practices of crime detection and prevention on the other, I presume that this interaction can be described neither as a mere reception/implementation of theory by practitioners nor as a theoretical legitimization of given practices of exclusion, stigmatization, and coercion.
