ABSTRACT
This chapter explicates the need for developing new theories capable of providing richer and generally more persuasive accounts of the ‘crime decline’, and the multifaceted complexities of crime and harm more broadly. Initially, attention is drawn to the constraining presence of the dominant and subdominant paradigmatic forces that currently monopolise the mainstream criminological canon. The focus of the chapter then moves towards transcending these constraining influences by exploring the use of alternative positions capable of facilitating a more accurate and holistic examination of crime, its purported decline and social harms which remain otherwise opaque to the mainstream criminological canon. This is achieved by drawing upon the various components that comprise the new ultra-realist approach. These include the philosophical traditions of critical realism and transcendental materialism as well as the theory of the pseudo-pacification process. Together, they provide insights capable of furnishing us with a greater understanding of our current social condition, revealing how it is anything but conducive to an ‘international crime decline’.
