RT Article
T1 The Kerry Babies, criminology, and Reinhart Koselleck
JF Criminology & criminal justice
VO 25
IS 2
SP 530
OP 548
A1 Molloy, Ciara
A2 O’Donnell, Ian
LA English
YR 2025
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1920046623
AB The Kerry Babies case was a criminal investigation that followed the discovery of a dead infant on a beach in the southwest of Ireland in April 1984. Charges were laid and dismissed. A tribunal of inquiry into alleged police malpractice followed, and the case returned to the courts 35 years later. This paper takes a multidimensional approach to historical time, drawing on the works of German philosopher Reinhart Koselleck to analyse the case, its legacy, and its implications for criminological theory. A Koselleckian approach – drawing in particular on the role of anachronisms, the mobilisation of memory and the categories of experience and expectation – facilitates a novel perspective on child killing, unmarried motherhood, and policing in 20th-century Ireland.
K1 unmarried motherhood
K1 Temporality
K1 Reinhart Koselleck
K1 Kerry Babies
K1 Historical criminology
DO 10.1177/17488958221126674