Description
The discipline of criminology is often presumed to have paid limited attention to military issues, however such a belief is incorrect. Despite concerns related to ‘militarism’ having been largely displaced within criminology for matters associated with ‘militarization’, interest with military personnel as ‘deviant’ social actors have been a consistent – albeit marginal – feature of criminological literature since (at least) the late 19th century, with the first critical criminological commentary on military personnel and ‘militarism’ emerging in the early 20th century. Following an arcane, but sustained, period of such scholarship after the Second World War, the commencement of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 21st century spurred a new era of criminological interest in the study of current and ex-military personnel. Conceptualised as a ‘criminological-military enterprise’, such research has been variously engaged with framing the individual and collective needs, or criminogenic characteristics, of this dually problematic and seemingly ‘vulnerable’ population as an exceptional – and at times pathological - social group in need of further analysis, treatment and understanding. It will be argued that such an enduring ‘enterprise’ has displaced a capacity to foreground, and pursue, a critical understanding of both ‘military harms and the harms of militarism’ within criminology.
