Citation

Crewe D. J. Theoret. Philos. Criminol. 2019; 11(1): 1-17.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, David Polizzi)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

The Problem of Crime as an ordering principle in contemporary society is greater than the sum of all its individual crimes and offences involving conventional victims. Hence, any solution to the Problem of Crime must transcend mere crime prevention or reduction as conceived of in Crime Science or Situational Crime Control for example. One site for such a holistic approach to the Problem of Crime is what has become known as Peacemaking Criminology. Peacemaking, however is not one of the most popular forms of criminology for research academics. The reason for this one might suggest is that its foundations rely on what have been called "the great wisdom traditions"(Braswell, Fuller, & Lozoff, 2001, p. 24), Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Native American. These traditions lie outside the Modern, Rational episteme, and indeed behave more like religions than 'science'. By making use of Western philosophical tools, I hope to make conflict reduction and peacemaking more amenable to modern criminologists by examining the notion of blame and its relationship to responsibility, to show that blaming constitutes violence and hence a failure in our obligation to others, and thus, that peacemaking as conflict reduction can be conceived of using more Western foundations than "the great wisdom traditions".

Language: en