Library of Essays in Theoretical Criminology – serie

One of the oldest and most extensive forms of criminology falls within what is referred to, among other names, as social ecology. Beginning with the work of Guerry and Quetelet, this theory became the dominate paradigm in explaining crime with the work of the Chicago School in the early 1900s, social disorganization theory, and neighborhood research attempting to deal with crime in deteriorating cities. Social ecology is also the basis for the research being conducted in environmental criminology. This volume offers a selection of the most influential works in social ecology and environmental criminology. It begins with research from human ecology and the Chicago School, extending through some of the research in social disorganization theory. It encompasses some of the major journal articles from the 1980s and 1990s in neighborhoods and crime, and then addresses some of the quintessential works in environmental criminology. It ends with groundbreaking work in this area that may indicate the future direction of the field. This valuable collection includes an excellent introduction by Jeff Walker.

Anomie, strain and subcultural theories are among the leading theories of crime. Anomie theories state that crime results from the failure of society to regulate adequately the behavior of individuals, particularly the efforts of individuals to achieve monetary success. Strain theories focus on the impact of strains or stressors on crime, including the inability to achieve monetary success through legal channels. And subcultural theories argue that some individuals turn to crime because they belong to groups that excuse, justify or approve of crime. This volume presents the leading selections on each theory, including the original statements of the theories, key efforts to revise the theories, and the latest statements of each theory. The coeditors, Robert Agnew and Joanne Kaufman, are prominent strain theorists; and their introductory essay provides an overview of the theories, discusses the relationship between them, and introduces each of the selections.

Biosocial criminology is an emerging perspective that highlights the interdependence between genetic and environmental factors in the etiology of antisocial behaviors. However, given that biosocial criminology has only recently gained traction among criminologists, there has not been any attempt to compile some of the "classic" articles on this topic. Beaver and Walsh's edited volume addresses this gap in the literature by identifying some of the most influential biosocial criminological articles and including them in a single resource. The articles covered in this volume examine the connection between genetics and crime, evolutionary psychology and crime, and neuroscience and crime. This volume will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding the causes of crime from a biosocial criminological perspective.

This volume presents the rich and provocative historical, theoretical, methodological, and applied developments within affirmative postmodern and post-structural criminology. This includes the evolution of thought that embraces the "linguistic turn" in crime, law justice, and social change. Previously-published articles authored by key thinkers are included throughout the book's five substantive sections. Collectively, they represent important reflections on the current criminological landscape in which symbolic, linguistic, material, and cultural realms of analyses are featured.

Cultural criminology has now emerged as a distinct theoretical perspective, and as a notable intellectual alternative to certain aspects of contemporary criminology. Cultural criminology attempts to theorize the interplay of cultural processes, media practices, and crime; the emotional and embodied dimensions of crime and victimization; the particular characteristics of crime within late modern/late capitalist culture; and the role of criminology itself in constructing the reality of crime. In this sense cultural criminology not only offers innovative theoretical models for making sense of crime, criminality, and crime control, but presents as well a critical theory of criminology as a field of study. This collection is designed to highlight each of these dimensions of cultural criminology - its theoretical foundations, its current theoretical trajectories, and its broader theoretical critiques-by presenting the best of cultural criminological work from the United States, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere.

Control theories have dominated criminological theory and research since the 1969 publication of Hirschi's seminal work on the social bond. Social control and self-control theorists are unique in suggesting that patterns in criminal behaviors are better explained by variations in social constraints rather than by individual motivational impulses, thus indicating that their main concerns are the explication and clarification of the techniques, processes, and institutions of informal social control. The four major sections of this volume focus on: the similarities and differences among the major contributors to the early developmental stage of social control theory; the central importance of parents, peers, and schools in the creation of informal control mechanisms and their link to crime and delinquency; the theoretical underpinnings of self-control theory, including empirical tests and criticisms; and theoretical integrations of social control and self-control theories with various motivational theories of crime and delinquency.

The developmental and life-course perspective in criminology came to prominence during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s a number of theories were developed to explain offending behavior over the life-course. This volume brings together theoretical statements, empirical tests and debates of these major theories within the developmental and life-course criminology perspective. In the first section of the book, original theoretical statements are provided and this is followed by a section which includes empirical tests of each of these theories conducted by researchers other than the original theorists. The final section of the book provides a summary of the major debates both within the developmental and life-course perspective and also between this perspective and others within criminology. This comprehensive volume provides an informative overview of the developmental and life-course perspective in criminology.

The readings selected for this volume reveal the historical development of social learning theory, from its origins in differential association theory, through the role played by psychological behaviorism, to contemporary social learning theory and its further incorporation of social structure as the context within which criminal behavior is learned. The volume dispels common misunderstandings of the theory and emphasizes its foundations in both symbolic interactionism and behaviorism. At its core, the theory remains true to its origins in sociology, reflecting Sutherland's admonition that a complete learning theory must include macro- and micro-sociological processes. Besides conceptual treatments of the theory's development, the volume also presents data-based entries that convey the depth and breadth of social learning theory as an explanation of deviance. Social learning theory is demonstrated to be an explanation that spans the gamut of behaviors from gang activities to drug use to coercive sex to terrorism.

Opportunity theories of crime seek to explain the occurrence of crime rather than simply the existence of criminal dispositions. They emphasize the fundamental element in the criminal act of opportunity: how this arises, how it is perceived, evaluated and acted on by those with criminal dispositions. This volume brings together influential research articles on opportunity theories of crime by leading theorists such as Cohen and Felson on routine activity theory and Clarke and Cornish on the bounded rational choice perspective. The articles also include more recent theoretical developments and studies of situational crime prevention of specific twenty-first century crimes. These articles attest to the sheer volume as well to as the richness and the variety of work designed to reduce crime that has forever changed the face of criminology and criminal justice.

This collection re-imagines the field of criminology with insights gleaned from feminist theory. Works included here illustrate that gender is a key organizing principle of social life. This means that men and women have gender, that patriarchy as well as gender must be theorized, and that other systems of oppression such as race and class must also be studied to fully understand the crime problem and the criminal justice system. Finally, the articles collected here exemplify the feminist concern for thinking consciously about how and why we do our research with the crucial goal of producing knowledge that will promote social justice.

Social Constructionist Theory has become a transcendent perspective appearing in a variety of disciplines from sociology, psychology and psychotherapy, to geography, political science and post-modernism. It integrates the symbolic interactionist tradition of social psychology with the labeling theory from the sociology of deviance, and with sociological phenomenology, to provide insight into the ways social interaction becomes objective social reality, constitutive of social institutions and culminating in social structure. When applied to crime and justice, as in this volume, the theoretical penetration of mundane activities allow us to see how crime, justice and penalty emerge as anchoring concepts, while also showing the arbitrary nature of these social formations that have such an important impact on everyday people’s lives. The volume is organized to examine: the classical roots of constructionist theory in the work of Alfred Schutz and popularized by Berger and Luckmann; its applications to the sociology of deviance though the works of Becker and Goffman; and the important deviations into the methodology made by Garfinkel as well as reflections on its current standing in criminological theory.