Introduction

The sociologist Howard Becker once claimed that value-neutral sociology is not possible, that a person's research cannot be divorced from their personal beliefs and values. The same is true for philosophy, criminology and, arguably, all other academic disciplines – despite some academics’ claims that their research is value free. According to Becker:

Becker was asking for a value judgement to be made regarding an appropriate moral position for academic research. The answer for many sociologists has been that they are on the side of the oppressed, the downtrodden, the ‘other’. Much of criminology – especially that which calls itself critical – has claimed a similar allegiance; as the critical criminologist Phil Scraton (2005: 23) has put it: ‘It is about bearing witness, gathering testimonies, sharing experiences, garnering the view from below and exposing the politics and discourses of authoritarianism.’ Scraton's assessment is a clear value judgement of the purpose of critical scholarship. It is about social justice, it is antiauthoritarian and it is political. Of course, deciding which particular voices are ‘from below’ is itself a value judgement. At the other end of the spectrum much of Anglo-American criminology is positivist, seeing criminology as a science where the criminologist's job is to be as impartial as possible (see for example Tonry, 2014; Gelsthorpe, 2015). Yet impartiality is an impossibility; criminologists of all persuasions make value judgements concerning what they consider important to study as well as the theories and methods they choose to adopt.

Similarly, value judgements are central to what societies, governments and individuals regard as acceptable or unacceptable behaviour, what – or who – ought to be criminalised, what is regarded as serious or non-serious criminality, how to police, whether or not (or how) to punish and what might constitute a solution to ‘the crime problem’.