A Criminological–Military Enterprise

Abstract

This article builds upon, and extends, critiques of British criminology’s enterprising collaboration with state-based institutions. Through an investigation of the discipline’s discreet contribution to the UK military ‘knowledge economy’ (Catignani and Basham 2021), criminological research is revealed as having the capacity to insulate the British military from critique and depoliticize military violence. Informed by criminological and critical military studies scholarship, the ‘criminological–military enterprise’ is introduced into academic discourse. This term offers a critical analysis of the discipline’s contemporary ‘blended’ (Shields 2024) research with the British military estate, provides ‘enriched reflexive’ (Danielsson 2022) problems for critical scholars to contemplate, and calls for a (re)politicization of military issues within criminological research.