The Relevance of Peacemaking Criminology
David Esposito
Troy University

Abstract
The realm of peacemaking criminology rests within the social conflict theories. Peacemaking criminology is a perspective that seeks ending crime through transformative and restorative justice methods to help people create peaceful solutions to crime. Peacemaking criminology can be implemented in society to focus on healing families currently touched by crime. The implementation of peacemaking criminology would be a profoundly different approach in effort to break a cycle that repeats itself in the way society currently operates. One can examine research already available and the effectiveness of current programs with similar goals and then determine their effectiveness and merit to invest time and money. The fundamental goal of peacemaking criminology is to use a non-violent methodology to solve crime.

The Relevance of Peacemaking Criminology
Peacemaking criminology is definitely not mainstream criminology and has only emerged in the last quarter century, as revealed in the publication of Harold Pepinsky and Richard Quinney’s edited reader titled Criminology as Peacemaking (Barnes, nd). The overall argument offered by the Pepinsky and Quinney writers is that the whole of the American criminal justice system is predicated on the continuance of violence and oppression and the failure to explain for how the larger social system impacts the problem of crime (Aday, 1992). One would contend that the suffering is connected to the crime and if the crime ends, the suffering will also end. Peacemaking criminology asserts the abandonment of institutional arrangements have greatly contributed to a rise in crime rates. This would lead one to believe in order to make meaningful change, society must move toward a restorative form of justice instead of retributive justice (Barnes, nd).” Let