Revitalising a partisan public criminological pedagogy

Public Criminology tends to target the policy elite, overlooking criminology students even though they are an obvious and more amenable public with the potential to reach well beyond the academy and policy administrators. This chapter argues that revitalising the spirit that characterised radical criminology of the 1970s, criminology courses can engender a transformative spirit, whereby students are encouraged to develop critical competencies that result in them challenging injustice and become agents of social change. It will be argued that a partisan criminological education should be pursued as it has the potential for greater impact upon public criminology, insofar as students being emboldened to become critical and insurgent voices, not only of discrimination, oppression, and inequality but also of the institutions and practices of crime control.