ABSTRACT
Frequently, criminology – whether radical or administrative – has focused on identifying and systematically studying the nature, causes and effects of crime. Obtaining firm footings in radical criminology are unlikely because the archive is both heterogeneous and essentially contested. Reflexive analyses of criminological archives suggest the enduringly fragmented character of both administrative and radical approaches. For Nelken, the dispersal poses an intractable problem that leaves criminology assessing its, ‘ambitions in relation to trends which contrive its fragmentation and threaten its pretensions’. Taylor’s insightful reflections stress the importance of utopian thinking for critical criminologies. In so doing, he distinguishes between idle reflections that are utopian in nature, and a more rigorous ‘utopian critical analysis’. For him, The New Criminology’s political and normative commitments gives expression to a critical-utopian project specifically concerned with formulating alternative ways of existing, as conceived within present limits.
