This summer, Laureano Oubiña, a major Galician drug trafficker, launched a “drug trafficking tour” through the Arousa estuary. He offered his clients a boat ride through the places that defined an era and promised the story told firsthand – with lunch included. The initiative has since been banned by Galicia’s regional government for infringing on tourism laws.

This is an example of “dark tourism” – the practice of visiting places marked by death, violence and crime. Oubiña’s proposed tour poses the question of whether this increasingly popular phenomenon is getting out of hand.

Read more: Dark tourism: why atrocity tourism is neither new nor weird

But dark tourism is a broad umbrella term. It is both a commercial label linked to the tourism industry’s need for constant novelty, and a social phenomenon. It is of great academic interest to the field of cultural criminology, which studies the ways people understand crime and perceive violence.

Cultural criminology also looks at the popular non-fiction genre known as true crime. These are series, podcasts, books and movies that analyse serious criminal offences. Both true crime and dark tourism follow trends, offering valuable information about the way we understand violence and crime.

They show that society’s response to criminal, violent acts is complex. Curiosity mixes with a need to reflect and remember, to try to understand their causes, and to make sense of them.

Favelas, Alcatraz, war memorials

The dark tourism that........

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