ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the implications of orienting to pedagogy as a form of public criminology. Re-envisioning criminological teaching as a form of public criminology expands our understanding of what public criminology is—and what it can accomplish—and provides guidance for what critical pedagogy can look like in the criminology classroom. In practice, pedagogy as public criminology should: privilege questions over answers, recognize the subjectivity inherent in our knowledge and means of knowledge production, be attentive to the values that suffuse and structure our field and the larger social world, and work to actively counter hegemonic forces. There exist many challenges to such a pedagogy, including discomfort with subjectivity and values in the classroom, the irreconcilability of abolitionist and reformist perspectives on criminology, and the politicization of tertiary education. Despite these challenges, we must strive to engage students in interrogating the systems through which we create, control, and respond to crime, and prompt them to reimagine public life without them. Doing so both expands public criminology in beneficial ways and demonstrates to students that they have standing in criminological conversations.
