It was established in 1989 and is the official journal of the Division on Critical Criminology and Social Justice of the American Society of Criminology,[Note 1] and of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Section on Critical Criminology.

It has been published by Springer Science+Business Media since 2006[1] and as of 2023 the editors in chief are David Brotherton and Jayne Mooney.

Its focus is broader than a standard definition of crime, focusing on "issues of social harm and social justice", and it strives to showcase collaborative efforts towards solving complex issues which might help build a society which eliminates or minimises exclusion on the basis of gender, race, class and other differences among people.

[4] The journal began life as The Journal of Human Justice in 1989, created by the Human Justice Collective in Vancouver,[5] with its first issue focused on Canada.

[5] In 1996 it was published by the American Society of Criminology's Division on Critical Criminology in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond in Canada as Critical Criminology: An International Journal and, after an hiatus in publication between 1998 and 1999,[1] has continued under this name until the present (2020).