Jock Young on the State of Criminology

I just returned from a 3 day visit to Los Angeles for the American Society of Criminology meeting. I enjoy the ASC (much more than the American Sociological Association meetings). The highlight of this year's meeting for me was listening to Jock Young deliver a stinging criticism of the discipline's abstracted empiricism (taken from C. Wright Mills, "where precision is mistaken for truth").

The real irony of the ASC is that so few of these people know any criminology!

He correctly (imho) criticizes mainstream U.S. style criminology as a all method and no substance. One takes data that he or she didn't collect and builds mathematical models to test theories that he or she did not develop. This leads to reificiation of existing theory, uncritical reliance on linear model methods, and uninteresting questions.

He also took swipes at Travis Hirschi, Criminology the journal, and Albert Blumstein. While some of it was more mean-spirited than I generally like, it was refreshing and different.