Foreword

Summary

This is the second major cross-disciplinary work produced by Andrew Millie in the past few years, but it is neither a sequel nor a prequel; it is something altogether different and indeed radical. As he demonstrated in his last publication, Philosophical Criminology (2016), Millie is an expert at unearthing the roots of criminological debates in older disciplinary fields. In that previous book, he reflected on the philosophical origins of so many of the contemporary debates happening in the field, illuminating and complicating criminological arguments.

In this second volume, inspired by the previous one, contributors explore links and overlaps with the related but rather more controversial field of public theology, specifically Christian theology. Here, Millie finds something even more deeply buried in the criminological soil. These are not roots, so much, as bones – bones that were purposefully hidden away, out of sight, meant to be forgotten and never mentioned. The corpses are familiar though, even disturbingly so. They are not the bones of strangers, the bones of the enemy or a foreign species; they are family, they are us. How uncomfortable that the graves are not marked, that there were no maps or markers or memorials to acknowledge what lies beneath.

Resurrecting these ideas (apologies, I could hardly resist) is a risky, dangerous thing. The theological origins (and indeed nature) of criminology have been essentially ignored by generations of criminologists. To clarify, it appears from these pages that there is actually no shortage of theological engagement with criminological issues. That is, theologians have long wrestled with issues of sin, punishment, stigma, forgiveness, and the like, and have not missed the obvious application of these issues to criminal justice matters in the contemporary world. This is the ‘public’ aspect of public theology – the effort to apply theological lessons to pressing social problems and concerns. Far less common is criminological engagement with these theological theories and writing, which is primarily the terrain of this thoroughly insightful volume. The contributors here discuss links between theology and criminological theory, of course, including John Braithwaite's reintegrative shaming and, yes, theories of desistance. Yet, readers may be particularly jolted to see actual research by Alison Liebling, Mark Halsey, Lawrence Sherman and many others discussed alongside theological interpretation of the likes of Jesus, St Paul or St Augustine. But why?