This book brings together leading experts to consider the relationship between criminology and democratic politics. Chapters cover a range of themes such as punishment, knowledge and penal politics; crime, fear and the media; democratic politics and the uses of criminological knowledge; and the public role of criminology.

1. Introduction 2. A conversation with Richard Sparks 3. Authoritarian under-labouring? 4. Criminology's plausible worlds: Ideologies, crime control, and the practice of democratic under-labouring 5. Public and southern criminologies: A possible encounter 6. Desistance research and penal policy 7. Understanding comparative penality: Some continuing conceptual and analytical challenges 8. Punishment and epistemological politics in Europe 9.Outrage marketing and deceptive campaigning: Populist and epistocratic pathologies of an anti-political era 10. Epistemic public criminology: The fallacies of evidence-based policing 11. Public perceptions of the seriousness of crime: A valid indicator of actual crime seriousness? 12. Dark sides and black holes: A study of criminological research utilization in two sex offender policies 13. Reflections on knowledge exchange and democratic under-labouring: Encounters, brokering, and the collective impact of engagement 14. Different worlds: Police, police research, and policy in Belgium 15. 90 years of criminology at the KU Leuven: Political, theoretical, and institutional considerations 16. What are we going to do now? Criminology and democratic politics all over again