Doing newsmaking criminology from within the academy

Abstract

Newsmaking criminology refers to the conscious efforts and activities of criminologists to interpret, influence or shape the representation of `newsworthy' items about crime and justice. In this reflexive and evaluative thought piece, I critically assess the value of this criminological intervention from the vantage point of the person who coined the term and first introduced it some 20 years ago. I conclude that newsmaking criminology as a perspective on the theory, practice and study of mass communications as well as on the representations of crime and justice, is still an invaluable approach for understanding as fundamental to the larger criminological enterprise in general and to administrative criminology in particular, the joint roles that each plays as part of neoliberal-bourgeois statecraft.