Proliferation of crime causation theories in an era of fragmentation: Reflections on the current state of criminological theory

Abstract

In this presidential address I reflect on the theme of the 2015 annual European Society of Criminology meeting by addressing and discussing the issue of the overwhelming number of crime causation theories in criminology, as well as providing a brief assessment of their quality. The discipline possesses a mixture of hundreds of perspectives, definitions, ideas, sketches, multiple factors, theories and single hypotheses that are partly true and partly untrue, and none are completely true or untrue. It will be argued that, among other factors, criminologists in fact apply hardly any rule to distinguish between true and untrue theories. I sketch the evolution of the discipline and some of its features that led to the current state of affairs. With these issues in mind I raise the question of whether this situation is good or bad for criminology. A future challenge for the discipline will be a stronger commitment by criminological researchers to design more epistemological and methodological studies to limit further proliferation of criminological theories and improve their quality. To reach that reduction, three strategies will be discussed.