Beyond Criminology? Taking harm seriously.

The paper opens by rehearsing some well-known criticisms made of both criminology as a discipline and criminal justice as a set of institutions and processes. The terrain of criminology has largely been defined by states' own concerns - reflected through criminal justice systems - with the crimes and incivilities of the relatively powerless. The mutually reinforcing effect of these narrow fixations has been to maintain existing power relations. The paper then sets out how a 'social harm' perspective differs from a 'crime' one. A harm perspective means considering 'physical', 'financial/economic', 'emotional and psychological' and 'sexual' harms, among other things. The paper concludes by pointing to the various advantages of a harm perspective. These include an enhanced ability to consider the underlying, rather than superficial, causes of various harms, and to develop more appropriate policy responses than are allowed for under a crime perspective. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]