The criminological imagination was a concept developed by Jock Young from the work of sociologist C. Wright Mills who wrote ‘The Sociological Imagination’ in 1959. C. Wright Mills in his book challenges the traditional studying of sociology and suggests a move away from the kind of sociology that supported the elitist attitude. Mills also sparked a desire to move from the rigid ‘scientific’ methodology and place more value on individual experiences as well as the context in which those experiences are situated. Mills’s book greatly influenced Jock Young as he noticed a similar trend in criminology to that which Mills noticed in sociology. In Young’s ‘The Criminological Imagination’ written in 2011, he rejects what the study of criminology had become in the modern day, with its determinist attitude and inward focus, stating that the subject was putting too much into insignificant aspects of crime. Young proposes a return to a criminological imagination where the study of criminology becomes more creative and outward facing, engaging with social, economic, historic and political contexts. He hoped that this would create more well-rounded theories and results that would be beneficial to the future of criminology and society itself.
Jock Young argues that to fulfil the potential of the criminological imagination, we must reject the increasingly positivist focus of criminology. The positivist attitude in criminology, developed by Enrico Ferri and Cesare Lombroso in the 19th century, argues that criminals become criminals because of their own innate nature and biology rather than the surroundings or society in which they grew up in. As a result, these criminologists study criminals with scientific objectivity, researching areas such as the chemistry and neurology of individual offenders, not their backgrounds, using rigid scientific methods such as lab experiments. This school of criminology offers benefits to the discipline such as arguing for the varying of prison sentencing and the treatment of prisoners to be more human. These kinds of studies often focus on one small aspect at a time, for example Lombroso and his observations of the facial features of offenders. Lombroso argued that you could detect a criminal through congenital defects or the shape of an individual’s jaw. Young would suggest that these studies lack room for multiple other variables such as the economic background of offenders and therefore can’t give a complete picture as to exactly why a crime was committed. Lombroso’s research also showed a number of ethical and methodological flaws, for example, his studies showed some racial bias. He also studied female criminality much less, arguing female criminals are much rarer because they lack the intelligence to commit crimes as they were less evolved than men. In many of his studies, he didn’t use a control group and therefore, his results could not show complete validity as there was no comparison for the offenders.
The idea of criminology is to study and develop clear connections between crime and the social, economic or political climate at the time, as well as its position within the historical context. The criminological imagination and studying crime within various contexts therefore discovers new perspectives on crime by ‘connecting offenders with their (less visible) historical and structural contexts’. The importance of this is that the connections made are on a much deeper and more significant level. In an attempt to expand the criminological imagination, Young suggested further introduction of culture into the studying of criminology. His interest in cultural criminology came fairly late into his career along with ‘political changes’ that saw him disenfranchised with the state and their policies on crime control and the justice system. Jock Young believed that bringing more culture into the new criminology that was evolving would further ensure a deeper creativity and imagination into the discipline. The practice of cultural criminology became strongly linked to new criminology and a step back from the positivist attitude which Young and other criminologists at the time began to so vehemently reject. Cultural criminology fits in so well with the idea of the criminological imagination because culture can not be explained simply by the relationship between two variables but is a connection between various complex aspects and changes constantly throughout history and societies.
The criminological imagination is intertwined with critical criminology. Critical criminology was developed in the 1960s as a response to the failings of the positivist school of criminology. It was created as a way of ‘present[ing] perspectives … that challenge state-defined concepts of crime [and] oppose official crime statistics’. These ‘state-defined concepts’ for example, may have claimed that offenders are created through their own immorality such as is argued by the positivist school of criminology. However, as has been made clear in criminological research in the last few decades, crimes of necessity are very common and are a result of the economic or societal difficulties experienced by offenders. The development of critical criminology came after a number of social movements such as the women’s suffrage movement, as they too challenged perceptions that had previously been laid out by society. These movements showed themselves to be inspiration for critical criminologists to begin to challenge the state with their research.
Other criminologists such as Frank P. Williams III have also discussed the idea of a criminological imagination and some even earlier than Jock Young. Williams wrote ‘Criminological Theory’ in 1998 and in the book, he discusses very similar ideas to Young in terms of studying criminology. Put simply, Williams suggests that there is more to gain from theories based on imagination and creativity than those based solely in rigid science and that these theories offer more for the future of criminology. Part of what is involved in the criminological imagination is relying less on statistical data and supposed ‘truth’ as it is often misrepresentative. For example, in the 1980s, national government-funded surveys were carried out on the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, most specifically HIV/AIDS. However, those groups of people who were most at-risk, such as the homeless or prostitutes were not as easy to find to interview and therefore potentially the most enlightening or extreme data was not gauged. This would influence the results in a way that would make them inaccurate to what was really happening in terms of sexual health and could prevent the right steps being taken by the government.
An advantage of qualitative methods is that they provide much more detail than quantitative methods as they rely on the participant giving opinionated results. Therefore, Young argued that more qualitative methodologies, though maybe being less scientific, can provide a better view of the world as they delve deeper into the issue at hand. However, there are also disadvantages of gaining qualitative data. One of these weaknesses is that the data is harder to analyse than quantitative data and can be potentially more difficult to accurately repeat.Young would claim that the advantages of having a fully realised and understood theory outweighs the difficulties that arise from using qualitative methods to study criminology. However, he also wouldn’t suggest solely using qualitative methods even ethnographies as even they can’t create a complete picture by themselves. A mix of creative methods must be used, as well as those quantitative methods that traditional criminologists were putting into practice.
Both The Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills and The Criminological Imagination by Jock Young criticise abstract empiricism which is a form of quantitative study that attempts to simply explain variables without theoretical basis. Abstract empiricism has a great deal of benefit when it comes to gaining rigidly scientific data and giving criminology scientific status as a subject. However, Mills suggested this ‘abstract empiricism’ offers little understanding of sociology and therefore does not benefit the discipline in any way. This links in with Mills’s ‘grand theory’ where he argued that the organisation and rigidity of concepts had become more important than true understanding of society.
Work on the criminological imagination is ongoing, with criminologists Burton and Davis claiming that to have a criminological imagination ‘requires both an intellectual and empathic understanding of personal troubles around crime and harm as public issues.’ These academics suggest that the significance of the criminological imagination lies within the connection between criminals and their position in society, as well as the effect that their position has on the rest of the public. The definition of the criminological imagination itself is constantly changing with the development of criminology as different things come into the forefront of society as ‘public issues’. For example, the constant flux of what is considered a ‘moral panic’ will shape the study of criminology from the fear of the mods to the fear of the hooded youth.
In conclusion, the criminological imagination is exactly what it puts itself out to be. It is the development of the study of criminology through creative methodologies and theories. It is the rejection of positivism and determinism in order to gain a better understanding of offenders and the societies in which they live. The criminological imagination does this by using qualitative methods and refusing to explain aspects of society solely through the relationship between two variables. It accepts that in order to really understand criminology in a way that would benefit society, criminologists must be open to explore more ‘imaginative’ ways of studying the discipline. There is no pure definition of the criminological imagination, the term describes a movement pushed by Jock Young and other academics into a less traditional version of criminology that would take into account multiple significant aspects of the world.