Dr Orlando Goodall

I lecture in Criminology at the University of Plymouth. My interests span the critical social sciences, including but not limited to rural criminology, food enterprise misconduct and harms against non-human animals. 

In addition to those core interests I have ongoing interests in global human rights and political corruption from a state crime position, philosophy of social science, historical materialism, critical realism and the structural transformation of crime, punishment and penality. 

I have worked for Penny Green at the International State Crime Initiative (as research assistant for the ESRC funded project - State Crime and Civil Activism: On the Dialectics of Repression and Resistance (Green and Ward, 2019) and was a regular attendee of seminars with Roy Bhaskar at the UCL IOE. 

My research is the first sustained empirical exploration of illegal deer taking and rural enterprise food crimes in the U.K. I am reconceptualising illicit rural enterprise activity and wildlife crime from a CR realist social relations perspective. 

Professional membership

The international society for the study of rural crime. 

The critical realist network of crime, security and justice.

Teaching interests

I am module lead for three modules:

Critical Issues in Criminal Justice (Level 4)

This module equips students with the means to interrogate pressing political and social issues that impact society, such as austerity and privatization. With a principle focus on David Garland's classic work (2001), students learn about the emergence of the new penology (technocratic managerialism) and the new punitiveness (penal populism) as distinct but inter-related parallel tendencies of justice and penal policy. Their unanticipated and unplanned historical emergence from a contradictory basis of inconsistent neoliberal political economic conditions is a main focus of the module. 

Global (In)securities and the State (Level 6)

This module is based around the module leaders experiences working at the International State Crime Initiative. A critical, dialectical, state crime framework is elaborated while taking in an array of major historical events. Atrocity crimes, intentional human rights violations and the marginalisation, dehumanization and persecution of victims is a focus of the module. As is the failure of the international community, global structures and traditional criminology to answer for these most pressing of problems. The module is post-disciplinary and includes elements of security studies, international relations, criminology of war and global state crime.  

Green Criminology (Level 6)

This module brings students a unique way of understanding contemporary crimes and harms against nature and non-human species. The module leaders own extended fieldwork is used to theorise the problems relating to fauna, rural and food crimes. Critical theories are adopted to frame issues at the macro level, principally the ecological and metabolic rift, as advanced by Marx and currently John Bellamy Foster. More concretely the module leaders own novel conceptual framework helps students to think innovatively and critically about the antagonisms between human society and nature. 

This module uniquely benefits from the insights and expertise of senior level expert practitioners who give guest lectures. Accordingly, speakers include investigators from the National Wildlife Crime Unit, Devon and Cornwall Rural and Wildlife Crime police officers, Environmental Health inspectors, the Bat Conservation Trust and others. 

I guest lecture in criminological theory, sustainable development and postgraduate rural crime. 

Research interests

The nexus of animal, rural and food enterprise based illicit activity. Green, post-human, dialectical criminology. The application of critical realism to research questions and a focus on macro-structural conditions. 

Publications:

Goodall, O. (2023). The Rural Enterprise Crime Complex: 'Undefendable Rural Space' and the Threat from the Fortress Farm. Crime, Law and Social Change. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-023-10084-z

Goodall, O. (2021). Rural criminal collaborations and the food crimes of the countryside: realist social relations theory of illicit venison production. Crime, Law and Social Change. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-021-09976-9

Goodall, O. (2020). Beyond Wildlife Crime: Towards the concept of 'mundane fauna crime'. Criminology and Criminal Justice. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895820981603

Other academic activities

Founding member of the Critical Realist Crime, Justice and Security Network. 

2022 winner of the International Society of Rural Criminology, New Scholar award, for outstanding contributions to rural crime and justice.