Criminology, global crime and criminal law. The epistemological debate in contemporary criminology

Since its academic origins, criminology has been dealing almost exclusively with individual criminality. As W. Morrison question in his Criminology, civilsation and the new world order, what criminology has to say against the countless genocides and war crimes of the last and present centuries?; What about the social and environmental consequences of the current neoliberal economic model? To try to answer these questions criminology and criminal justice must be separated and have epistemological autonomy, adopting its own perspectives and viewpoints. A critically refounded criminology would perform two functions, one descriptive and one prescriptive. The descriptive would undertake a conceptual analysis of the various types of crimes of the powerful and an empirical research on its phenomenological variety. The prescriptive function would promote a series of policies and measures for the reformulation of the hierarchy of the legally protected interests.