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Text Box: justified. Journals like Criminology should be held accountable for their bias. Simultaneously, however, we should recall that critical criminologists long ago struggled against the right of the mainstream to define crime by official standards and to fixate on lower class criminals. The issue before us now parallels those debates. Rather than accept the mainstream's definition of ‘respectable journals,’ or take their rankings as the appropriate point of reference, shouldn't we expand Arrigo’s proposal by insisting on our own rankings? Wouldn't this provide those of us concerned with journal prestige a reasonable reference point for defending the value of our work? Wouldn't we also be able to strengthen our claim that the work we do is different and that the value of our work should be judged against the values held by the community of critical scholars? In our view, the issue being discussed appears to be connected, in part, to the perception of journal prestige, especially the perception of critical journals dictated by the mainstream. If this consideration is included in the issue of bias, doesn't it make sense to find strategies that enhance the prestige and image of the journals in which critical scholars publish their work? Are we willing to accept that a critical article appearing in Criminology is, on its face, better than one that appears in critical journals? The edition of Critical Criminology (1997), all by itself, devoted to the conflicts in Ireland edited by Brian MacLean, answers this question. It was outstanding. Finally, suggestions for employing the Internet to establish a journal – or some semblance of one – have been made by Biko Agozino and the Schwendingers. We would like to recap that suggestion. It should be noted that The Western Journal of Criminology is now being published on the Web. Selected papers from British Criminology Conferences are also available via the Web. (See, among others, the brilliant paper by Mary deYoung about ‘the export of ritual abuse moral panic’.) Because the Web provides the opportunity for reaching a larger readership, even individual scholars are using it to replicate articles previously published in journals and a few are publishing their original work there, too. An augmented Web page would provide space, at little cost, for a large number of critical articles

Text Box: mainstream journals. Robert K. Merton may have received the 1996 Sutherland Award because delinquency subculture theorists (employing his paradigm) ranked second and third in citations from 1945 to 1972. But he never received that award because of the scientific validity of these theories. Some criminologists may be capable of making a sow’s ear out of a silk purse but they cannot justifiably replace standards identifying genuine contributions to science with opinion polls based on citations found in a journal like Criminology. Accepting the limits of our criticism, we certainly grant that many worthwhile articles appear in Criminology. Other journals such as Crime and Delinquency can also be singled out in this regard. Furthermore, it is our impression that additional journals, including mainstream criminal justice journals, have become interested in publishing articles by critical criminologists. Nevertheless, the mobilization of bias and trained incapacity of Criminology’s editors and reviewers are also evident. To put it in Imre Lakatos’ (1970) terms, Criminology, in our opinion, exemplifies an oligarchic control exercised by the defenders of ‘a hard core of theoretical presuppositions’. They also preserve a ‘a protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses’ which bear the brunt of tests and then ‘get adjusted and readjusted, or even completely replaced,’ to defend the hardened core against rival schools of thought.7 Importantly, this often occurs on the basis of statistically weak associations that fail to meet more rigorous scientific standards. Criminologists, for example, will often argue that their hypothesis has been proven because individual variables attain statistical significance even though they use a large number of cases, or where the models fit the data poorly (e.g., where there is a low R2 ). The difficulties in bucking these defenders of the faith raise an important issue. Why should it be less valuable to publish in critical journals than mainstream journals? Why is it that some critical scholars appear so willing to accept the mainstream definition and value of ‘respectable’ publications? Certainly, Arrigo’s call to action is