Reconceptualizing Crime: Epistemological Hybridity, Ontological Instability, and Theoretical Contestations in Late-Modern Criminology

This paper interrogates the epistemological, structural, and political foundations of contemporary criminology, tracing its evolution from positivist etiologies to critical, socio-structural, and abolitionist paradigms. Through an integrated analysis spanning classical theory, the political economy of punishment, carceral geography, and transformative justice frameworks, the work demonstrates how crime, deviance, and punishment are not neutral categories but socially constructed, historically contingent, and deeply implicated in broader power relations. It argues that late-modern penality is increasingly characterized by actuarial rationalities, risk governance, and spatialized modalities of control that extend the reach of carceral power far beyond prison walls. Drawing on interdisciplinary insights from sociology, critical race theory, political economy, and geography, the paper contends that punitive institutions function as technologies of population management structured by racial capitalism, neoliberal restructuring, and state responsibilization regimes. The conclusion advances a reflexive, post-punitive criminological imaginary grounded in transformative justice and abolitionist epistemologies, calling for a reconceptualization of harm, responsibility, and social order that surpasses the limitations of traditional criminal justice systems.