Cultural criminology explores the cultural context of deviance, law breaking and social control. Cultural criminologists study sub-cultures of resistance, constructions of crime and media representations of criminals by critically examining these phenomena within the social, cultural, political and economic contexts of late capitalism. Cultural criminology sheds light on images of crime, styles of crime, portrayals of crime and the interactions between crime and crime control.

Cultural criminology grew out of the British/Birmingham School of Cultural Studies and British ‘new criminology’ of the late 1970s. Theorists and researchers within these schools of thought turned criminological attention away from simply counting crime and measuring criminal behaviour to examining the cultural meanings of crime: for the criminals and criminal sub-groups who take part in crime, to the mass news media that selectively report on crime, to the creators and consumers of the ‘crime as entertainment industry’ and to the politicians and business owners who capitalize off the fear of crime.

The cultural criminological notion of the ‘carnival of crime’ asserts that post-modern, late capitalist cultures are steeped in violence, hate and senseless acts of harm. In Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime, Presdee argues that the economics of late capitalism have provoked a popular cultural desire for extreme, oppositional forms of pleasure. This desire has caused some acts to be deemed criminal by those in power. Presdee (2000) applies this carnival of crime idea to joyriding, street crime and anti-social behaviour on the internet, as well as the preoccupation with hate, hurt and humiliation in various forms of popular culture.

Cultural criminologists focus on representations of crime in popular culture. Drawing on symbolic interactionist sociology as well as the framework of moral panics, cultural criminologists look critically at the social and cultural construction of criminals, criminal sub-cultures, crime waves and so-called drug epidemics. In the tradition of social constructionism, a cultural criminological approach examines how certain behaviours under certain circumstances are made illegal. Symbolic interactionism views society and social knowledge as actively and creatively produced through human interaction. Social norms and laws exist because people have made them real through language and interaction, social conventions, habits and etiquette.