ABSTRACT
Why does criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) scholarship largely fail to prioritize the most salient forms of harm, victimization, and human suffering? It is insufficient to merely point out the shortcoming of conventional (or mainstream) CCJ discourse, but to explain how it came about. In this chapter, I offer a historically grounded orientation to criminological discourses and criminal justice practices and explain why criminogenic capital – among other structural harms – have been largely omitted from the bulk of our collective work. To make sense of the structural shortcomings of criminological theory and research, I historically situate criminology within a broader intellectual project of imperial and colonial nation building. I draw conceptual and material connections between empiricism and empire, and show how settler colonial states are commonsensical sources of settler colonial sciences. After providing these broad overarching critiques, I also offer a more practical and logistical audit of the contemporary CCJ research enterprise, which continues to largely disincentivize scholarship into crimes of the powerful. Towards the end of the chapter, I remind readers that while these works are in the minority, there is a compelling history of crimes of the powerful scholarship, which is what informs not only the existence of this series, but my own approach to studying white-collar crime and corruption in the nightlife economy.
