Introduction

Overall, this edited collection seeks to consolidate and extend our knowledge on emotional labour in criminal justice and criminology. In this chapter, we begin by providing an overview of the concept of emotional labour and provide some examples of how it has been deployed in academic research. In doing so, we touch on key terms such as surface and deep acting, and display rules and briefly go over what evidence exists on the impact of emotional labour on people who perform it as part of their role. The concept has been used less widely in the field of criminal justice and criminology, and so we also begin to think about why we – as criminologists – should study emotional labour. We argue that it provides a lens with which to examine an array of issues that are directly relevant and pertinent to criminal justice work and finish with a brief overview of the chapters contained within the volume.