Imagining Crime

Alison Young is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Criminology at Melbourne University. She is author of Femininity in Dissent (1990, Routledge) and has also written numerous articles on the intersections of law, criminology and feminist theory. Her current research concerns art as a mode of criminal and deviant expression.

• Textual Outlaws and Criminal ConversationsCriminology and the Question of FeminismThe Universal Victim and the Body in CrisisThe Scene of the CrimeReading the Justice of Detective FictionThe Bulger Case and the Trauma of the VisibleCriminological ConcordatsOn the Single Mother and the Criminal ChildFatal FramesHIV/AIDS as Spectacle in Criminal JusticeAfterthoughtsThe Imagination of Crime

`Represents a significant contribution to the ongoing debate over the future of criminology.... Each chapter thus performs a critical cultural "reading" of specific examples from the crimino-legal complex. The examples chosen are disparate, varying from an intellectual/academic movement (feminism in/and criminology), to Conservative ministerial pronouncements on "the family", via the detective novel. The case studies offer a series of intelligent and thoughtful reflections on the various topics, teasing out meanings, explicating figures of speech and explaining the logics at work. In Chapter 2, she examines criminology from the perspective of feminism. She argues that criminology as a whole is intrinsically masculine, this conclusion deriving from her concern with the meanings embedded within criminological concepts. This emphasis on the gender bias of the categories of the criminological imagination is particularly interesting.... A distinctive feature of this book is the inclusion of certain psychoanalytic concepts into her argument.... an insightful and well-crafted work. Anyone concerned with the development of theoretical criminology would find it essential reading′ - Theoretical Criminology`This bold and ambitious book.... Young offers interpretations that are challenging, provocative, and thought-provoking, and much of the book′s impressiveness derives from this′ - Journal of Law and Society`In short, this is an engaging study that offers valuable insights into the way crime is imagined. It can be an excellent addition to the graduate courses′ syllabi in criminology, sociology, women′s studies and cultural studies. I strongly recommend the book to scholars interested in issues related to the social construction of crime.... the book offers interesting insights into our understanding of the mechanisms used to create, discipline and domesticate textual outlaws′ - American Journal of Sociology