In Their Own Words: Criminals on Crime.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Maruna, Shadd
• Date: 01 August 2006

In Their Own Words: Criminals on Crime Paul Cromwell (2006) Los Angeles: Roxbury, 340pp, ISBN 193171955 I

There is a quiet revolution taking place in criminology--amongst a smattering of noisier and more dubious revolutions making a claim for becoming the new 'new criminology'. The difference is that this new criminology feels very 'old' or at least 'old school' (maybe Chicago School, even, and that is really old). This new/old school of criminology involves talking to criminals (or at least those we label criminals) and hearing their side of the various stories we are all interested in as criminologists: how did they get involved in crime? What does it involve? How do they get out of the life when they have had enough. Some of these interviews, it should be said, take place with individuals in prison, but others involve talking to offenders in their natural habitat, even watching them at work or at least hanging out where they hang out.

At the core of the movement is an acknowledgment that our subjects, unlike chemicals or cells or apes, are perfectly capable of communicating to researchers, explaining what they have been through, what they do, and what they hope to achieve with various behaviours. It is an apparently obvious and simple idea, but to many this...