ABSTRACT
The neo-Kantian genres of critique evident within radical criminological archives variously found their critical judgements on more or less absolute, universal and certain grounds. Many analysts refer to a ‘counterculture’ which, in the 1960s, challenged middle-class (mainstream) images of culture, and inspired numerous attempts to escape its limitations. This counterculture spawned alternative social meanings, lifestyles, cultural reference points and was allied to the development of a New Left politics. When explicitly pursuing a radical programme of criminology at Berkeley, Platt argued that radical criminology should grasp and resist the role of administrative architects of repression. His purpose was to redefine criminology so that it could directly address wider matters of political economy, and lend itself to general struggles aiming to overcome capitalist exploitation. There are expressly stated links between the precepts of the new criminology and strands of anarchist and/or abolitionism, and it could equally be associated with New Left genres.
