ABSTRACT
(Neo)-conservatism refers to a tradition of political thought rather than to a discrete body of criminological ideas or theory. All criminological theory carries political implications, but it was only in the 1970s that a self-consciously neo-conservative criminology appeared and was embraced by politicians of the right like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Neo-conservative criminology was authored by academics who were often themselves involved in conservative policy-making circles, and it coincided tellingly with the rising salience of crime as a political issue. Edmund Burke, author of the most famous critique of the revolution, Reflections on the Revolution in France, is often credited as the pivotal figure, although he never used the term conservative and was aligned with the Whigs in English politics. Burke's conservatism finds an echo in neo-conservative arguments around crime that took root in parts of academe and in the mainstream of American and British politics from the late 1970s.
