Criminology in Perspective: An Analysis of Trends in Normative Expectations, Research Orientations, and Policy in Recent Decades

The field of criminology has experienced rapid growth in the last three decades. During this time become institutionally independent, but at same time, impact criminological research on policy been declining face a populist punitive turn. These developments call for reflexive introspective account state discipline. Using qualitative methods, we analyse Presidential Addresses given annual meetings American Society Criminology (ASC) over 30 years. This analysis yields factors that pertain to normative questions, orientations, and speak today. We assess changes relative weights these corresponding historical world affairs. In addition, compare ASC addresses limited number recently published European Criminology. Our results critically expose trends tensions criminology, point rise importance attributed “big picture” analysis, with increasing attention considerations social context.