Routledge International Handbook of Criminology and Affect

This unprecedentedly expansive international collection of empirical and theoretical material explores the nascent field of criminology and affect. Affect theory first arose as an analytical framework to conceptualize and understand dynamic emotional relationships between individuals and the social environment. Despite the tremendous potential utility for affect theory to assist criminologists with conceptualizing crime and justice, affect remains underutilized in criminological research. Uniting research from otherwise geographically and culturally disparate locales under affect’s analytical umbrella presents a unique opportunity to demonstrate how criminologists can utilize affect theory to understand aspects of the justice process that otherwise prove elusive.

The Handbook is organized around the most pressing topics of interest to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners engaged with crime and the administration of justice. The first set of chapters explore emotion management among police officers and security workers, socio-legal approaches to police violence, and dynamic interactions between historical and security apparatuses. Section Two examines the intersection of guns and emotions, how crime concerns and perceived victimization risks affect public support for harsher criminal sanctions, the academic study of criminal decision-making, and how women in the sex trade affectively navigate criminalization and social exclusion. The key topics underpinning Section Three include incorporating affect theory into genocide studies, emotions and justice in maritime piracy trials, agricultural crime and farmer mental health, the affective risks criminal justice systems can pose to victims of intimate partner violence, and trauma and affect among justice-involved individuals. Section Four engages with the role of emotions in perceptions of photo and video evidence, judicial authority, family group therapy for juvenile offenders, and how legal decisionmakers interpret remorse. Section Five features chapters on courtroom video testimony, rape trials, and affective dimensions of death penalty cases for jurors and members of the public. Section Six tackles political dimensions of knowledge production, identity formation in prison dog training programs, carceral exclusion through family estrangement, institutional and social constructions of incarcerated women’s emotional wellbeing, and how prisoners create positive affect. Section Seven focuses on penal evaluation, public perceptions of parole worthiness, and the ethics of publicly performing work created by incarcerated women. The final section addresses emotions in sexual violence research, ethnographic interviews about organized crime, narrative criminology’s affective dimensions, and the emotional dynamics of doing team-based work on violence against women in the researcher’s home community.

By focusing on emotion as a dynamic and transmissible component of human interaction, this important work illuminates how researchers and practitioners can account for the less tangible—but nonetheless extremely significant—aspects of the justice process.