Introducing Criminology

by Coleman; Clive

• ISBN13: 9781903240090
• ISBN10: 1903240093
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: Willan

Summary

Criminology, or the study of crime, has developed rapidly as a subject in recent years, while crime and the problem of how to respond to it have become major concerns for society as a whole. This book provides a succinct and highly readable - and much needed - introduction to criminology for those who want to learn more, whether they are already studying the subject, thinking of doing so, or just interested to discover what criminology is about.Introducing Criminology begins by asking basic questions: what is crime? what is criminology?, before examining the ways in which crime has been studied, and looking at the main approaches and schools of thought within criminology and how these have been developed. The authors focus particularly upon attempts to understand and explain crime by the disciplines of psychology and sociology, and consider also the impact of feminist and postmodern thought on the development of the subject.In the second part of the book the authors take three very different topics to illustrate some of the themes raised in the first half of the book, exploring the particular issues raised by each topic, and showing how criminologists have gone about their work:serial murder - the attempt to understand a particular type of crimepolicing - key issues in the study of the criminal justice processCCTV - how we can tell "what works" in crime prevention, and what are the wider issues raised by the use of CCTV?

Table of Contents

Preface	viii
Introduction	1	(5)
Crime, the criminal and criminology	6	(20)
What is crime? Who is the criminal?	6	(6)
The legalistic position	6	(1)
Conduct norms and their violation	7	(1)
Extending the concept of crime	8	(1)
The legalistic position restated	9	(1)
Crime as the violation of human rights	10	(1)
Crime as a social construction	11	(1)
What is criminology?	12	(4)
A multi-disciplinary discipline?	15	(1)
Criminology through the ages? Lombroso and all that	16	(8)
The classical school	17	(3)
The moral statisticians	20	(1)
The Italian positive school	21	(2)
The British context	23	(1)
Conclusion	24	(2)
Offenders and non-offenders: spot the difference?	26	(30)
Biological approaches	27	(4)
Physical characteristics and crime	27	(1)
Twin studies	28	(1)
Studies of adoptees	28	(1)
The new biology of crime	29	(2)
Psychological approaches	31	(19)
Psychoanalytic approaches	33	(2)
Learning theories	35	(6)
Cognitive approaches	41	(9)
The revival of approaches locating the sources of crime in the individual	50	(4)
Conclusion	54	(2)
A broader vision of crime	56	(31)
Environmental criminology	56	(4)
Sutherland, differential association and white-collar crime	60	(1)
Merton, anomie and strain	61	(3)
Subcultures, gangs and delinquency	64	(3)
Control theory	67	(2)
Interactionism, labelling and moral panics	69	(4)
Radical criminologies	73	(3)
Feminist perspectives	76	(3)
Left realism	79	(4)
Postmodernity, postmodernism and the modernist project	83	(2)
Conclusion	85	(2)
Thinking seriously about serial killers	87	(29)
Murder most horrid: defining serial murder	88	(3)
How many serial murders, murderers and victims?	91	(2)
A growing menace?	93	(1)
Types of serial murderer	94	(5)
Understanding serial murder	99	(15)
Biology: natural born killers?	100	(2)
Psychology: inside the mind of the serial killer?	102	(5)
Sociology: outside the mind of the serial killer?	107	(7)
Post-mortem	114	(2)
Policing and the police: key issues in criminal justice	116	(30)
Introduction	116	(3)
Definitions and delivery	119	(11)
Enforcement, prevention and detection: the police role examined	121	(9)
Discretion and discrimination	130	(9)
Discretion	130	(4)
Discrimination	134	(5)
Due process and deviancy	139	(6)
Due process	140	(1)
Crime control	141	(4)
Conclusions	145	(1)
CCTV and crime prevention: questions for criminology	146	(30)
Crime prevention	146	(3)
The rise of CCTV	149	(2)
Does CCTV reduce crime? Methodological concerns	151	(14)
What is meant by CCTV?	152	(1)
What is meant by crime and how can it be measured?	153	(3)
The concept of reduction and its measurement	156	(5)
Experimental design	161	(4)
Does CCTV reduce crime in town centres?
The evaluation evidence	165	(4)
Realistic evaluation	169	(3)
Context	170	(1)
Mechanisms	170	(1)
Outcomes	171	(1)
CCTV, discrimination and social exclusion	172	(4)
Criminology: some concluding thoughts	176	(4)
Bibliography	180	(18)
Index	198