Wich methodology for a critical criminology?

Abstract

This essay proposes a theoretical-methodological perspective that strives to provide elements to imagine a viable methodology for critical criminology. Without going into the “macro-micro” polarization in which critical criminology is part of, we intend to observe and analyze two different research approaches that use interviews with judges as techniques of data collection: one, which seeks to find truth from the actors that are part of an investigative process, and another one, designed to understand, within a empathic-inductive perspective, the point of view of the actors before the eventual need to bring to light their practices. We criticize what we call “sociology of the gap” and its correctional project. Thus, more than only measuring and correcting the gap of an observed activity, we situate the researcher as someone who aspires to understand the gap and learn how the actors deal with the rules that guide their actions, and how they justify them. This article highlights: the way in which one can observe intersubjectivity in interviews, the kind of relationship that one aspires to have in a research process, and sociology’s reflexive capability (to understand itself within this process).