ABSTRACT
This book examines some connections between philosophy and criminology, focusing chiefly on the explication of forms of normativity and the relation between facts and values. I argue that positivist commitments regarding facts and values have been an impediment to important aspects of the empirical study of morality and that criminology and moral philosophy can be mutually illuminating in some significant ways. Core commitments of positivism block that illumination and misrepresent the phenomena. This is not a blanket indictment of positivism in the social sciences; it has had a constructive influence in various respects and a significant role in debates about the scientific character of the social sciences. But I believe that positivist claims regarding normativity and the relation between facts and values are mistaken and have been unhelpful. Criminology's credentials as empirical science do not depend on a commitment to positivism, and non-positivist criminologists are explicating relations between facts and normative considerations in illuminating ways. I will argue that there are multiple layers of normativity in the criminal justice context and positivist commitments get in the way of understanding them and the relations between them.
