Thriving on a Pale Blue Dot: Criminology and the Anthropocene

Abstract

The Anthropocene may require a fundamental rethinking of safety and security. The safety and security that earth systems have provided can no longer simply be regarded as the work of Nature, and as something that we humans must simply live with. We are now revealed as a geological force that has, and is shaping these systems. And this, to invoke Klein, changes everything. And it most certainly may change, and has already begun to change, criminology, an area of enquiry whose fundamental topic has been safety and security. In this chapter, we outline some of the fundamental questions posed by the Anthropocene for criminology. To push the limits of existing criminological knowledge we ask:

• What has already been achieved in criminology and what remains unanswered for confronting the key intractable problems of the Anthropocene?

• What might criminology be in the Anthropocene?

• What does the Anthropocene suggest for future theory and practice of criminology more generally?

We synthesise key generalisable lessons and insights from leading thinkers and respond to the questions we have posed above.