Criminology: A Sociological Introduction

Front Cover
Psychology Press, 2004 - Law - 428 pages

This sociological introduction provides a much-needed textbook for an increasingly popular area of study. Written by a team of authors with a broad range of teaching and individual expertise, it covers almost every module offered in UK criminological courses and will be valuable to students of criminology worldwide. It covers:

  • key traditions in criminology, their critical assessment and more recent developments
  • new ways of thinking about crime and control, including crime and emotions, drugs and alcohol, from a public health perspective
  • different dimensions of the problem of crime and misconduct, including crime and sexuality, crimes against the environment, crime and human rights and organizational deviance
  • key debates in criminological theory
  • the criminal justice system
  • new areas such as the globalization of crime, and crime in cyberspace.

Specially designed to be user-friendly, each chapter contains boxed material on current controversies, key thinkers and examples of crime and criminal justice around the world with statistical tables, maps, summaries, critical thinking questions, annotated references and a glossary of key terms, as well as further reading sections and additional resource information as weblinks.

From inside the book

Contents

Structure of the book
11
Critical thinking questions
12
Methodology and Measurement in Criminology
13
Thinking critically about statistics
14
an exemplar of thinking critically about recorded crime
16
National crime victimization surveys
18
Thinking positively about crime statistics
21
Getting inside the immediacy of crime
22
Professional organised crime in Britain 1930s2000
192
Ethnicity and the organisation of crime
195
Crime in the world of lawful professions
197
Crime and the professions
199
Crime in the world of corporatelevel business and commerce
202
Transnational corporate crimes
206
Summary
208
Further study
209

Moral ethical and legal difficulties of getting inside the immediacy of crime
23
Taking sides in criminological research
25
Further study
29
THINKING ABOUT CRIME
31
The Enlightenment and Early Traditions
33
A caution
34
Enlightenment thinking about crime
35
The classical tradition in criminology
36
some recent classical developments
39
Statistical regularity and positivism
41
The positivist inheritance
43
The problems with the positivist model
46
Critical thinking questions
47
Further study
48
Early Sociological Thinking about Crime
49
The normality of crime
50
The problems with functionalism
51
The problems with Marxism
54
The Chicago School and crime
55
differential association theory
60
The problems with the Chicago School
61
The problems with anomie theory
62
Gangs youth and deviant subcultures
63
Synthesising the theories?
64
Control theories
65
Social control theory
66
The problems with control theory
67
Summary
68
Further study
69
Radicalising Traditions Labelling New Criminologies and the Gender Issue
71
Deviance and labelling theory
74
Becker Lemert and Cohen
75
The wider contributions
77
The problems with labelling theory
78
Developments
79
Crime as conflict
80
Jeffrey Reiman and economic conflicts
81
Left realism
83
Left idealism?
84
The Birmingham Centre and new subcultural theory
85
Some problems
87
Cultural criminology
88
The critique of malestream criminology
89
bringing women back in
90
masculinity theories and the problem of men
92
Foucault and discourse theory
93
Summary
95
More information
96
Social Change and Criminological Thinking
97
Crime and the movement to late modernity
98
The exclusive society
100
Postmodernism and crime
101
Comparative criminology globalisation and crime
103
Globalisation
104
The rebirth of human rights theories
107
More information
113
DOING CRIME
115
Victims and Victimization
117
The role of victims within the criminal justice system
118
The hierarchy of victimization
119
Different types of victimology
121
Crime victimization surveys
123
Social variables in crime victimization
124
Gender
126
The impact of crime
127
Towards a victimoriented criminal justice process?
129
Summary
132
Critical thinking questions
133
More information
134
Crime and Property
135
Patterns of property crime
136
Comparative experiences
137
The hidden figure of property crime
139
Profile of property crime offenders
140
Everybody does it?
142
The social distribution of crime risks
143
Social class
144
Age
145
Controlling property crime
146
Other forms of property crime
147
Theft of intellectual property
149
New horizons in understanding property crime
150
Summary
151
Critical thinking questions
152
More information
153
Crime and Sexuality
154
sex crimes gender and violence
158
Rape
159
Pornography
162
The panics around sex crimes
164
The changing character of sex crimes
166
Sex crimes on the Internet
168
Changes in the law concerning sexual offences in the United Kingdom
169
Summary
171
Further study
172
Crime and Emotion
174
Rediscovering emotion in crime
175
Hate crime
176
Thrillseeking
178
Selfesteem
181
Respect
182
Revenge
184
Humiliation and rage
186
Summary
187
More information
188
Organisational and Professional Forms of Crime
189
Thinking about organisational and professional crime
190
Crime in the world of illegal enterprise
191
Drugs Alcohol Health and Crime
210
The anomaly of alcohol
213
Drugs as a global issue
214
Are drugs a problem?
216
Drugs and crime
218
Drugs offenders
219
Criminal groups and the drug market
220
Controlling drugs
221
Alcohol and crime
222
a public health issue
225
Crime public health and social inequalities
226
Public health as social policing
227
The medicalisation of control in prisons
228
Medicine and the criminal justice system
229
Critical thinking questions
231
More information
232
CONTROLLING CRIME
233
Thinking about Punishment
235
Philosophical justifications
236
Retributivist principles
239
Sociological explanations
242
Marx and political economy
245
Foucault and disciplinary power
247
Feminist challenges
250
Summary
251
Further study
252
The Criminal Justice Process
254
Overview of criminal justice institutions
255
Key stages of the criminal justice process
257
The police
259
The judiciary
260
The Probation Service
261
The nature of criminal justice
263
Substantive justice
266
Negotiated justice
268
Criminal justice in crisis?
270
Summary
271
Further study
272
Police and Policing
274
Historical origins and continuities
275
Police roles and functions
279
Police culture
282
Police accountability
284
Political accountability
285
Managerial accountability
286
Police deviance and criminality
287
Privatisation and pluralisation in policing
289
Summary
290
Critical thinking questions
291
More information
292
Prisons and Imprisonment
293
Comparing penal systems
294
The origins of imprisionment
296
Why prison?
298
The modern prison estate
300
Contemporary crises
301
Authority and managerialism
302
Social consequences
303
Gendered prisons
305
Ethnicity nationality and racism
307
Prison sociology
308
Summary
311
GLOBALISING CRIME
315
The Greening of Criminology
317
Two opening examples
319
Types of green crimes
320
Secondary or symbiotic green crimes
322
criminalising environmental issues
325
The growth of environmental legislation
326
Green crimes social costs and social exclusion
327
Local communities as dump sites
328
green movements of resistance and change
329
A green backlash?
330
Ways ahead in a risk society
332
Critical thinking questions
333
More information
334
Crime and the Media
335
Blurring boundaries
336
Media effects popular anxieties and violent representations
337
Dramatising crime manufacturing consent and news production
339
Imagining transgression representing detection and consuming crime
342
Crime in cyberspace
348
Summary
351
Further study
352
Human Rights and Crimes of the State
353
The emergence and institutionalisation of the human rights paradigm
354
Criminology human rights and crimes of the state
355
Case studies of debates on crime and human rights
357
Capital punishment
359
case studies
360
Outlawing Holocaust denial
362
Is inequality a crime?
364
Summary
365
Critical thinking questions
366
Futures of Crime Control and Criminology
367
The persistence of the past
369
The extension of current trends
370
The present into the future
371
Criminological thinking present and future?
372
Criminological futures?
373
Risk and risky populations as the future focus of control?
376
Risk prevention the future and the past
377
Summary
378
Glossary
379
Bibliography
384
Webliography
416
Index
425
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