ABSTRACT
This chapter considers anarchist criminology which launches aggressive and ‘unreasonable’ critiques against law and legal authority, because it is argued that these undermine human community and diversity. It aims its disrespectable gaze both high and low: it thus not only attacks the state structure and legal authority above us but also encourages those below and beyond this authority to find ways of resisting and finding more egalitarian alternatives. Thus, likeminded peacemaking criminology argues that the whole of the US criminal justice system is based on the continuance of violence and oppression (as seen in the prison system), war (as seen in the war on crime and the war on drugs) and the failure to account for how the larger social system contributes to the problem of crime (as seen in the failure to reduce poverty in society). The state itself is seen to perpetuate crime (and violence) through repressive policies of social control, such as the death penalty, lengthy prison sentences for offenders and the criminalization of non-violent drug offences.
