Acid Criminology

Abstract Acid criminology is an emergent critical approach which builds on Mark Fisher’s notion of “Acid Communism” to develop a conceptual framework oriented toward reclaiming the lost potentials of the counterculture and psychedelia. While the 1960s were the first period in which psychedelic drug use became widely prevalent in western society, the impact of psychedelia reached far beyond just those who consumed the substances. Rather, it came to represent the emergent desire within the counterculture to break out of the staid orthodoxy of the early 1960s and to create something fundamentally new. One of the central associations with both psychedelia and radical criminology was the idea of possibility—that the world as it currently existed was malleable and could be changed to curtail the domination of the many by the few. Both psychedelia and radical criminology cultivated this sense of possibility through disrupting hegemonic norms, raising political consciousness and building a broad-based collective mobilization to demand transformative change. However, by the 1980s, the ascendency of neoliberalism, a reversion to law-and-order politics, and the establishment of realism as the dominant criminological paradigm meant that radical criminology was now remembered as a colorful, if ultimately futile, endeavor that effected little substantive change. Yet, this narrative overlooks perhaps the most significant contribution of radical criminology—the cleaving open of ideological space in which alternatives to criminal justice appeared as not simply possible, but imminent. Dominated by the belief that genuine alternatives—to policing, prisons, or criminal justice in general—are no longer feasible, criminology has since retreated into a managerialist science, centrally oriented toward gradualist improvements rather than the overthrow of oppressive systems. Yet, just as in the 1960s, a period of turmoil and mass collective protest has reemerged in the 21st century, in which the symbolic efficiency of narratives about the enlightened benevolence of powerful elites weakens, while the acknowledgment of the need for urgent radical change grows stronger. In this context, a realist criminology focused on crime control strategies constrains the belief that transformative social change is possible. Thinking of psychedelia as a political metaphor for breaking out of ideological constraints and transforming society invites a rereading of radical criminology, away from the idea of impotent dreamers and rather as a first step toward an alternative way of thinking about crime. Through this metaphor, the unrealized psychedelic potentials of radical criminology can be thought of as a framework by which contemporary criminology can break out of its realist slumber through returning to the “acid” tendencies of radical criminology such as denaturalizing the doxa of contemporary criminal justice, fostering the belief that alternatives to existent criminal justice polices are possible, and collaborating with emergent social movements to affect transformative change. Only by disrupting the domination of criminal justice doxa can the true plasticity of reality be revealed, and attention may shift toward reconfiguration rather than resignation.

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