Preface

Summary

New Horizons in Criminology series aims to provide high quality and authoritative texts which reflect cutting- edge thought and theoretical development in criminology. All books are international in scope and are accessible and concise. One of the most exciting ‘new horizons’ to emerge in the last 10– 15 years has been visual criminology and I was delighted when Bill McClanahan agreed to contribute this text. His work is always worth reading and pushes the boundaries of criminological thinking, whether on green criminology, rural criminology or visual criminology (e.g. McClanahan 2014; Brisman et al 2018; McClanahan and Linnemann 2018). When I was shown the first draft of this book I was very impressed. His writing is clear, accessible and engaging and this ought to become the go-to book for visual criminology.

In the book McClanahan traces the origins of visual criminology in the various forms of visual sociology, anthropology and visual studies. He also considers the scope for visual methods within criminology. According to Nicole Rafter (2014: 129) visual criminology is ‘the study of ways in which all things visual interact with crime and criminal justice, inventing and shaping one another’. This reciprocal relationship between images and our understandings of crime and justice is central to visual criminology; as McClanahan highlights, this is not a criminology with images, using images merely for illustration. Rather, the visual is an important element in our construction and interpretation of crime, criminal justice systems and social harms. There are clear examples where the visual ought to be of criminological interest, be it the orange jumpsuits of Guantanamo Bay prisoners, the architecture of confinement, the proliferation of cop shows and docudramas on our TVs, or perhaps the sight of a police car speeding through a community with lights flashing and siren wailing. In this last example, it may be our engagement with sound as well as the visual that aids our construction of policing. McClanahan is aware that privileging the visual over other sensory engagement may lead to ‘ocularcentrism’, and in his work with Nigel South he has suggested scope for a sensory criminology (2020), also considered here.