Course-focused and comprehensive, the Textbook on series provides an accessible overview of the key areas on the law curriculum. The new criminologies emerged some 50 years ago, largely as a reaction against the positivism that had arisen in and taken over criminology. The ideas upon which this school is based are drawn from the works of Plato and Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Alfred Schultz, Karl Marx, and the Chicago School. While new criminologies largely agree on the basis for rejecting positivism, they differ over what should replace it. This chapter examines five theories of new criminologies: (i) labelling or interactionism; (ii) phenomenology and ethnomethodology; (iii) conflict; (iv) radical criminologies; and (v) cultural criminology.
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Course-focused and comprehensive, the Textbook on series provides an accessible overview of the key areas on the law curriculum. This chapter discusses the main types of criminological theory, where they originate, and what effects they have had on criminal justice and the understanding of the area of crime. It covers classical criminology, neo-classical criminology, and positivist criminology.
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This chapter first explains the nature of different books, journals, and articles encountered in the study of criminology. It introduces textbooks, edited collections, books of key readings, monographs, and dictionaries, together with journals as a key source of latest developments, research findings, criticism, and commentary. It moves on to consider how to find books and articles specified on a reading list. It then considers more generally how to find materials on a particular topic by developing a search strategy and using databases to locate relevant literature.
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This chapter reflects on criminological theories. It begins by considering what a theory is, how a theory can be assessed, and exploring the overarching ideas in criminology. Criminological theory improves the understanding of why laws are made, how and why we enforce rules and punish those who break them, the effects of crime control, how and why people choose to break or obey rules, and the effects of rule breaking. The main theoretical schools in criminology include classicism, positivism, interpretivism, and critical criminology. The chapter then looks at the importance of free will and rational choice and demonstrates how these ideas in the 17th and 18th centuries underline the modern criminal justice system and may explain how and why we, as a society, feel we can and should punish those who choose to break the law.
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Course-focused and comprehensive, the Textbook on series provides an accessible overview of the key areas on the law curriculum. This chapter first considers theories that seek to describe how conflicts within society may lead to criminality, or more exactly how they explain the type of criminality which will occur. These include the theories of Marx, Engels, Bonger, Sellin, Vold, Dahrendorf, Turk, Quinney, Chambliss, and Seidman. The chapter then discusses radical criminology, the most recent of the ‘New Criminologies’, which has been described variously as Marxist, socialist, left-wing, and critical. This is followed by a discussion of cultural criminology, a fairly new school of thought that draws together many of the modern and critical aspects of criminological thought and methodological approaches, such as a phenomenological approach and the ideas of symbolic interactionism; critical criminology and the Birmingham School; and radical and political approaches and layers in modern sociological analyses from culture, style, media culture, identity, and space.
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This chapter provides an overview of criminology, which is the scientific study of crime. ‘Criminologists’ are generally considered to be the lecturers, scholars, and researchers who create and impart criminological knowledge and understanding to inform the development of academic theories and arguments, and also of policies and practice relating to crime and people who come into conflict with the law. The study of criminology can be divided into three interconnected areas that each contribute to the understanding and knowledge of crime: defining and exploring crime, explaining crime, and responding to crime. We can view these three elements as not only a journey which leads on to research, but also as a triad of criminology. Ultimately, criminologists are interested in the sociological, psychological, legal, policy, and anthropological influences on defining, explaining, and responding to crime. The chapter details what criminology looks like as an academic subject.
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This chapter examines the link between crime and media. It summarizes major themes and debates that have shaped the research agenda, and considers some less well-rehearsed issues such as the changing global communications marketplace, the development of new media technologies, and the significance of these for understanding the connections between crime and media. The chapter is organized as follows. The first section offers some background information and addresses the crucial question of why exploring media images of crime and control is important. The second section considers how scholars have researched crime and media, and presents an overview of the main findings. The third section examines the dominant theoretical and conceptual tools that have been used to understand and explain media representations of crime. The final section considers the evidence for the influence of media representations, both on criminal behaviour and fear of crime.
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Richard Jones
This chapter considers the issues of security, risk, and surveillance. It discusses the meaning of these terms within criminology; introduces key relevant theories; summarizes criminological research in these areas; identifies some new security and surveillance technologies; and discusses their implications, concerns, and debates surrounding their use.
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Course-focused and comprehensive, the Textbook on series provides an accessible overview of the key areas on the law curriculum. This chapter, which summarises the preceding discussions and presents some final thoughts, suggests that we have now entered into a period of substantial change and progress in the field of criminology. Many of the people working in this area are now better equipped to make fuller use of statistical methods. Technological advances—and especially the development of the computer—have also revolutionised both the amount of material that can be collected and, even more, the ways in which it can be analysed and manipulated.
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Keith Hayward and Wayne Morrison
This chapter offers a comprehensive introduction to how criminological theory has developed and is used. It presents a series of theoretical vignettes, each of which provides both an accessible introduction to a particular theory and informed signposts to more detailed readings. The discussions cover criminology's two founding doctrines: the ‘classical’ and ‘positivist’ approaches to the study of crime; biological, genetic, and psychological explanations of crime; the Chicago School of sociology; the ‘labelling’ perspective; Marxist/radical criminology; criminological realism; control theory; and cultural criminology.
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Steve Case, Phil Johnson, David Manlow, Roger Smith, and Kate Williams
This book is the essential companion to exploring crime and criminal justice. It provides authoritative yet accessible coverage of all key topics of criminology, with a vibrant, student-focused approach that converts curiosity into critical analysis and students into criminologists. Its full coverage of today’s most pressing criminological issues includes chapters on global criminology (exploring organised crime, drug trafficking, people smuggling, cybercrime, and terrorism), social harm, and green criminology. The book also provides practical, focused guidance on beginning criminological studies and applying criminological knowledge to research, careers, and further study. The authors’ explanations are continually brought to life by the voices and experiences of a wide variety of people connected to criminology and the criminal justice system, from students and academics to prison officers and crime victims.
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This introductory chapter attempts to answer the question ‘what is criminology?’ by exploring the origin of criminology as a discipline together with an overview of some of the types of question that may be of interest to criminologists. It sets out the structure of the remainder of the book, the first part of which introduces the source material that is commonly used in the study of criminology. The second part focuses on academic skills, while the final part concentrates on research methods.
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This chapter investigates how researchers create knowledge in criminology. It covers two themes: first, the empirical research methods used in the discipline, and how understanding and knowledge of crime can be developed by applying, analysing, and evaluating criminological information. Secondly, the chapter discusses how this knowledge and understanding is influenced by the three important and interlinking factors of subjectivity (personal and disciplinary perspectives and opinions), supposition (guesswork, assumption), and study (for example, scholarship and conducting empirical and other types of research). ‘Empirical methods’ are the generation of evidence through (sensory) experience, particularly using experiments and observations. The chapter looks at the different research methods available to criminologists, covering both primary and secondary sources.
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Matthew Williams and David Wall
This chapter examines the nature of cybercrime and its implications for criminology. It is organized as follows. The first part traces the evolution of the Internet as an environment for the emergence of cybercrime. The second considers the various conflicting definitional problems of cybercrime and offers a method of resolving them. The third part outlines the problems with measuring cybercrime before providing an indication of the scale of the problem. The fourth part briefly explores how those problems are being resolved. The fifth part looks at the governance and regulation of cybercrime, while the final part provides an overview of the various theoretical explanations.
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Pamela Davies
This chapter explores the parameters of the study of the crime victim, and the history and scope of the academic subdiscipline within criminology known as victimology. It discusses victimological perspectives; researching victims of crime; and the extent, nature of, and risks to criminal victimization. The final section examines public policy and practice, considering how and why ‘victim’ is a problematic concept in the context of compensation. It problematizes a number of taken-for-granted victimological concepts, such as victimization and crime victim. This section also shows that key concepts, such as victim precipitation, culpability, provocation, and ideal victim connect to particular ways of constructing the crime victim and understanding victimization.
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13. Global criminology 1
Comparative criminology
Sacha Darke
This chapter presents an overview of global criminology, introducing the overarching theme and concept of globalisation and drawing comparisons between crime and justice in different countries. Today, criminologists who research other parts of the world increasingly turn to international definitions of crime, and international understanding of the causes of crime and the effectiveness and legitimacy of the various forms of crime control. In doing so, criminologists in the Global North are becoming more aware that they need to diversify the discipline further to include the knowledge and viewpoints of researchers from the Global South. The emerging area of global criminology is divided into two broad areas of research interest. The first, comparative criminology, focuses on identifying and understanding convergences and divergences in crime and justice between nations and regions. The second area, transnational criminology, explores the nature of organised, state, and corporate crimes and responses to organised crimes that cross borders.
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This chapter focuses on realist criminologies which emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The two main strands were right realism and left realism, so called because of the political leanings that influenced them. Realist criminologies were, in basic terms, theoretical developments grounded in and informed by sociological positivism (right realism) and critical criminologies (left realism). Realism itself is an important social scientific concept, developed to try to provide a basis for understanding social realities which are not directly observable or precisely measurable, but undoubtedly have material substance and affect human behaviour, such as the law. More recently, we have seen a further variation emerge in the form of ‘ultra-realist’ criminology, which seeks to challenge and extend the definition of ‘crime’ to encompass the idea of ‘social harm’, thereby making a connection with concerns about the environment or damaging state and corporate activity.
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This chapter investigates critical criminology. The strands that are widely regarded as most important in the development of critical criminology are labelling perspectives, Marxist-inspired critical theories, power perspectives, and feminist perspectives. The ideas and insights contained within these theories inspired and prepared the ground for more recent developments in the field, including cultural criminology and convict criminology. Critical criminology not only suggests that we make small alterations to criminal justice systems; instead, it requires us to question everything we think we ‘know’ about these systems and the societies and communities in which we live. It questions how and why we control behaviour, looks at power from the perspective of the oppressed or the powerless, and suggests alternative narratives that should be part of our accepted knowledge base.
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Course-focused and comprehensive, the Textbook on series provides an accessible overview of the key areas on the law curriculum. This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to introduce students to the broad study of criminology. The study begins at the end of the nineteenth century and considers theories that have gained credence over the past century or so. It then discusses two important aspects to many theories and the policies used by States in addressing crime, over the period studied. First, are offenders acting entirely out of choice or free will, and can thus be blamed and called to account for their actions? Second, are offenders less volitional in that their choices are limited through structural or social factors which tend to exclude or marginalise some groups or individuals? An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
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Course-focused and comprehensive, the Textbook on series provides an accessible overview of the key areas on the law curriculum. This chapter examines the victims of crime; the effects on victims; and the issue of ‘blaming’ victims for their own victimisation. It also considers whether criminology and criminal law processes are sufficiently concerned with the victim.
