SRP-Onderzoekszwaartepunt: Criminology of ‘the other’: Experiences and processes of ‘othering’ in and beyond crime control

In this SRP programme we will investigate how criminology relates to people that are defined as ‘the other’: including the powerless, the poor, and different types of minorities including ethnic, gender and racial. This approach will reflect on the ways in which these ‘others’ are criminalised and how prejudice and injustice are present in the criminological/judicial chain and beyond this chain, in political and public debates. More concretely, we will explore these topics in four domains: policing studies, penology, urban criminology, and public policy studies. The programme will revolve around two main research questions:
1) How are groups and individuals (such as urban youth, migrants, detained people, women) ‘othered’ by powerful institutions (government, media, police, prisons, courts)?
2) How is the study of these practices of ‘othering’ vulnerable to the reproduction of ‘othering’, that is, what are the methodological and ethical repercussions for doing sound research on ‘othering’?
This plan connects to broader contemporary international debates that have been the longstanding focus of the CRiS research group. In terms of methodology, we will draw from CRiS's long experience with empirical work on voicing ‘the other’ and invest in approaches that favour small scale qualitative analyses.