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Karagiannidis Preface

A social scientist can and in fact is obligated to act in a political way This does not mean that she/he should act as a politician but rather as a «prime mover» on the basis of his autonomy offered by his specific position in the process of producing new ideas (Bourdieu, 1997).
On the other hand, the penal abolitionist is responsible for the determination of an extremely positive function; the analysis and abolition of fictitious or falsely formulated problems. It is in his responsibility to pull up and bring about real problematic situations that do not have access in expression. It is in his responsibility to stand critical not only towards mainstream but also towards «new» or «critical» criminology which in its effort to reconcile irreconcilable points of view and practices, has render itself - to use Pierre Bourdieu's onomatopoeia - «the left hand of state authority» (1996 and 1997).
In this respect, penal abolitionism raised some questions and offered some answers. For example, it raised the question «does crime exist or is it just a myth?» and answered that «there is no such a thing as crime because...». In essence, I will try to comprehensively epitomise the abolitionist ideas in order to make the essential evaluation and I will aim to produce an accurate picture of the philosophy of penal abolitionism in order to make a de profundis analysis of this criminological paradigm. Moreover, I felt the necessity to add my own views on the future of penal abolitionism by pointing out some serious pitfalls the paradigm in question should avoid.
My conclusion will be that the answers given by penal abolitionism are convincing, powerful and stimulating. Penal abolitionism is the noble part of critical criminology and offers viable solutions to confront the «criminal phenomenon».




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