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32 Critical Criminology 1 (2024)

handle is hein.journals/ctlcrm32 and id is 1 raw text is: Critical Criminology (2024) 32:1-3 https://doi.org/1 0.1007/si10612-024-09770-8 Editorial (32)1 David Brotherton1 - Jayne Mooney1 Published online: 21 May 2024 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2024 This issue appears in the middle of deepening crises around the globe with state crimes carried out on unimaginable scales while in the United States an authoritarian president- in-waiting faces multiple criminal charges that would put any of us poor mortals in prison for many lifetimes. Not for him alas, as once again bourgeois justice shows it true face in its commitment to serving the interests of the governing social order. Thus, crimes of the powerful are business as usual here, a social fact that also goes for anywhere corporate capitalist governance is hegemonic. Let us not forget that it was under the Obama regime that the Department of Justice ensured that no banker went to prison after the heists of big capital during the financial crisis of 2008. Hence, plus ga change would seem to be the order of the day even as nature continues to bellow that profit-based extractivism, industrialism, private land ownership, consumerism and pollution bring us closer to extinction every day. Despite these apocalyptic forebodings, hope is always on the other side of despair, as Sartre once dialectically remarked. In this vein, we might note the explosion of pro- Palestinian protests especially with the student encampments across the United States. In the land that boasts of its democratic credentials free speech has effectively been criminalized. Is this evidence of a growing legitimacy crisis among elite-dominated, increasingly unresponsive systems of power? Such a question is especially pertinent in esteemed institutions of higher learning where students pay more than $60,000 a year for tuition and are left wondering what have these knowledge factories become? Whose space is this? To what end have we been turned into consumers of programs/credentials and/or clients of the institution if my future is getting more and not less precarious? The camps being set up are not just valiant efforts to take a stand in defense of self- determination but are expressions of youth's growing frustration with living in a nation where political life is controlled by a gerontocracy, the economy faithfully serves the billionaire class, and women face the distinct possibility of a federal ban on abortion among so many other shortcomings of a truly democratic society. This contrast between the missions that universities are supposed to uphold and what they do was captured in a recent New York Times (4/28/24) report on the crisis of control facing administrations. A former Ivy league police chief was asked to comment and unwittingly pointed to the cause of so much student disenchantment: This is the big concern, right? That these encampments will be there forever? ...it becomes a reason for people to not choose your E David Brotherton criticalcrmjournal@gmail.com John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, USA Springer