The public faces of public criminology

Abstract

There have recently been a number of calls for a public criminology – although the term is ill-defined – as if such a criminology were quite new. A vigorous public criminology did indeed once exist in England and Wales but it presented problems to the politician, policy-maker and scholar, and it became largely forgotten. If a public criminology is to re-emerge, it must contend with a spate of presentational difficulties which appear to have been too little considered.