On the occasion of the publication of a collection of articles by Stanley Cohen in 2016 (edited by Tom Deams), René van Swaaningen pays a tribute to this important, thought-provoking and pioneering thinker in criminology. He takes Cohen’s adage that we as critical criminologists always have to balance between intellectual scepticism and political commitment as a starting point for an analysis of his work. Cohen’s rejection of criminology as a liberal project may have led him to defining himself as an ‘anti-criminologist’, yet at the same time Cohen has been able to transform the discipline as such into a more power-critical direction. Two of Cohen’s key-contributions to criminological theory, those on moral panics and on denial, are discussed and related to each other. Whilst adopting Foucault’s analyses of power as a constructing practice, Cohen, in his work on social control, rejects the pessimist implications of Foucault’s work, in which human agency is defined away. In this essay, the relation of Cohen’s work with that of his mentor David Matza is also discussed, as well as is his great and ironic style of writing.

Positive criminology criticizes punitive measures, repression, crime control and the ‘politics of fear’, and re-values positive concepts as trust, solidarity, well-being and ‘ontological security’. In this book-review it is argued that many of these positive terms are beyond the scope of criminology and that peace and peace-making are more appropriate terms that can be used within a criminological context. Peacemaking criminology provides a basis for constructive approaches to conflicts and disorder; it may also outline the contours of the peace-making function of the law and the peacekeeping tasks of judges and police officers.

Based on a new book edited by Michael Hviid Jacobsen The Poetics of Crime. Understanding and Researching Crime and Devience Through Creative Sources (Ashgate, 2014), Dina Siegel analyzes the ways in which social scientists can find inspiration in art, music, literature, photography and dance. She discusses how these fields can enrich criminological research by introducing new analytical instruments and skills and to discover new research fields, meanings and emotions in crime-related issues.

Compartmentalization refers to a process by which groups of people are put apart from others. In these compartments violent acts could be committed with complete impunity. Although many genocidal periods are discussed, this book is actually about the Holocaust and what the author calls ‘compartmentalization of the personality’. How can it be explained that Nazis felt no regret or guilt? What are the personality traits of these mass murderers? What are their personal motives? According to the author these criminals cannot be termed ‘ordinary people’ who were brought to killings by the situation they were in or pressure exerted on them. Individual choice and self-selection play a role.

The recent exhibition The Crime Was Almost Perfect in the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, curated by Cristina Ricupero, focused on the dynamic relation between art (aesthetics) and crime (ethics). The review discusses the representations of crime in (some of) the exhibited art works and analyzes the ways in which the artists play with their (conflicting) meanings, ambivalences and ambiguities.