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A Critical Interpretation of the Credible Messenger

Thu, Nov 14, 8:00 to 9:20am, Salon 11 - Lower B2 Level

Abstract

Across the U.S. and beyond the work of credible messengers is invoked as a possible solution to the ongoing quest for effective forms of crime control. Much of this work, however, is imagined within the ideological frameworks of neo-liberalism and the reproduction of capitalist social relations where such interventions emphasize behavior modification in the service of bourgeois notions of social control. In this presentation I argue that a critical interpretation of the credible messenger must start from recognizing the root causes of crime and therefore locate such interventions within discourses of transformative consciousness, generative justice and the possibilities of community resistance and renewal. I conclude that only through such a critical criminological lens can we understand the potential for these forms of social agency and engagement to have the widest application in contexts where power asymmetries are the distinguishing feature of the community setting.

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