Da crimine a danno: ampliare i limiti della criminologia per aumentare la giustizia sociale

Chapter 1 presents the origins of zemiology as a discipline and explains Beyond Criminology’s nine fundamental criticisms of criminology; the core implication is that crime is a socially constructed concept that serves to maintain order while ignoring more significant harms, such as those caused by corporations and governments. Then, it analyses the features that make the neo-liberal model intrinsically harmful for the majority of people and extremely convenient for an elite. It points out the role played by criminology in Western neo-liberal democracies, emphasizing how the legal system reinforces inequalities. Chapter 2 explores the fundamental differences between the concepts of criminology – included critical criminology – social harm, and zemiology. In particular, it compares critical criminology and zemiology, highlighting their different approaches to social justice: while critical criminology seeks to improve the legal system, zemiology aims to move beyond it by analysing the social structures that generate harm. Once made this fundamental distinction, the analysis moves to the study of social harm, taking into account both its sustainers and its critics. In particular, the chapter presents Raymen’s (2021) remarks on the current approach to the study of social harm and his “assumption of harmlessness”. The chapter concludes with Canning and Tombs’ (2021) provisional typology of harm and their view on the possibility of conceptualising social harm by defining its ontology. In their view, the notion of social harm enables a broader understanding of harm beyond criminalization, including the consequences of neoliberal policies and systemic inequalities. Chapter 3 starts by trying to answer the question of what it means to do zemiology: it is not just a critique of criminology, but rather it is an innovative approach that examines social harm more comprehensively and systemically, beyond the limits imposed by criminology. The chapter explores the areas of potential zemiological study and how zemiology operates in practice, including its ethical and political implications. Zemiologists’ approach to research cannot be ascribed to a single method, but rather is an approach that adapts to both the victim’s and the researchers’ necessities. At the end of the chapter, the discourse moves to the more specific ambit of corporate harm and the lack of accountability corporations benefit from. Finally, chapter 4 examines corporate harm perpetrated in the U.S. health insurance industry. The specific case of Brian Thompson’s murder, allegedly committed by Luigi Mangione, is used as a case study to apply zemiology in practice and highlight how this approach may be more useful than criminology to examine this type of cases, because it allows to draw conclusions that are both more comprehensive of the instances of all the parties involved and more useful to generate the proper reflections about how we should approach harm that operates in our society.