How public is public criminology?

Abstract

A variety of opinions and observations about public sociology are reviewed in this paper, which then examines how criminology (as a branch of sociology) has reacted to the call to ‘go public’. Dilemmas, potential strengths and manifest weaknesses are brought to light. These, it will be argued, are mostly due to the peculiar disciplinary position of criminology, an area of enquiry which, by claiming improbable independence from sociology, is forced to neglect those very sociological concepts that would indeed make it more ‘public’.