Volume 52 is an annual survey of cutting-edge issues by preeminent criminology scholars. Since 1979, Crime and Justice has presented a review of the latest international research, providing expertise to enhance the work of sociologists, psychologists, criminal lawyers, justice scholars, and political scientists. The series explores a full range of issues concerning crime, its causes, and its cures. In both the review and the thematic volumes, Crime and Justice offers an interdisciplinary approach to address core issues in criminology.
American Sentencing provides an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of efforts in the state and the federal systems to make sentencing fairer, reduce overuse of imprisonment, and help offenders live law-abiding lives. It addresses a variety of topics and themes related to sentencing and reform, including racial disparities, violence prediction, plea negotiation, case processing, federal and state guidelines, California’s historic “realignment,” and more. This volume covers what students, scholars, practitioners, and policy makers need to know about how sentencing really works, what a half century’s “reforms” have and have not accomplished, how sentencing processes can be made fairer, and how sentencing outcomes can be made more just. Its writers are among America’s leading scholarly specialists—often the leading specialist—in their fields. Clearly and accessibly written, American Sentencing is ideal for teaching use in seminars and courses on sentencing, courts, and criminal justice. Its authors’ diverse perspectives shed light on these issues, making it likely the single, most authoritative source of information on the state of sentencing in America today.
Since 1979 the Crime and Justice series has presented a review of the latest international research, providing expertise to enhance the work of sociologists, psychologists, criminal lawyers, justice scholars, and political scientists. The series explores a full range of issues concerning crime, its causes, and its cures. In both the review and the thematic volumes, Crime and Justice offers an interdisciplinary approach to address core issues in criminology.
Women, Crime, and Justice: Balancing the Scales presents a comprehensive analysis of the role of women in the criminal justice system, providing important new insight to their position as offenders, victims, and practitioners. Draws on global feminist perspectives on female offending and victimization from around the world Covers topics including criminal law, case processing, domestic violence, gay/lesbian and transgendered prisoners, cyberbullying, offender re-entry, and sex trafficking Explores issues professional women face in the criminal justice workplace, such as police culture, judicial decision-making, working in corrections facilities, and more Includes international case examples throughout, using numerous topical examples and personal narratives to stimulate students’ critical thinking and active engagement
Prosecutors are powerful figures in any criminal justice system. They decide what crimes to prosecute, whom to pursue, what charges to file, whether to plea bargain, how aggressively to seek a conviction, and what sentence to demand. In the United States, citizens can challenge decisions by police, judges, and corrections officials, but courts keep their hands off the prosecutor. Curiously, in the United States and elsewhere, very little research is available that examines this powerful public role. And there is almost no work that critically compares how prosecutors function in different legal systems, from state to state or across countries. Prosecutors and Politics begins to fill that void. Police, courts, and prisons are much the same in all developed countries, but prosecutors differ radically. The consequences of these differences are enormous: the United States suffers from low levels of public confidence in the criminal justice system and high levels of incarceration; in much of Western Europe, people report high confidence and support moderate crime control policies; in much of Eastern Europe, people’s perceptions of the law are marked by cynicism and despair. Prosecutors and Politics unpacks these national differences and provides insight into this key area of social control. Since 1979 the Crime and Justice series has presented a review of the latest international research, providing expertise to enhance the work of sociologists, psychologists, criminal lawyers, justice scholars, and political scientists. The series explores a full range of issues concerning crime, its causes, and its cure.
Statistical analysis is critical in criminal justice. Professionals in the field must be diligent producers of research to assist policy makers in evaluating program and policy proposals. The key to understanding statistical analysis is by applying the concepts, methodology, and statistical procedures taught in the classroom. Written for undergraduates with little or no background in statistics, the third edition of Statistical Analysis in Criminal Justice and Criminology continues to focus on students’ understanding of fundamental analysis. It is premised on active learning utilizing common statistical tools to analyze crime data, avoiding the comprehensive approach common to many statistics texts. Authors draw from longtime classroom experience to present complex theories in approachable ways. Exercises move from an initial step through the application of concepts explained in each chapter before insights on interpreting the results in a meaningful way is provided. New to this edition is the inclusion of both SPSS and Excel criminal justice data sets used to complete end-of-chapter exercises and analyses. This distinctive offering enables readers to develop their skills with the program most accessible to them.
For the last three decades Jock Young's work has had a profound impact on criminology. Yet, in this provocative new book, Young rejects much of what criminology has become, criticizing the rigid determinism and rampant positivism that dominate the discipline today. His erudite and entertaining examination of what's gone wrong with criminology draws on a range of research - from urban ethnography to sexology and criminal victimization studies - to illustrate its failings. At the same time, Young makes a passionate case for a return to criminology's creative and critical potential, partly informed by the new developments in cultural criminology. A late-modern counterpart to C.Wright Mills's classic The Sociological Imagination, this inspirational piece of writing from one of the most brilliant voices in contemporary criminology will command widespread attention. It will be essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of criminology, and the social sciences more generally.
Sentencing Policies and Practices in Western Countries: Comparative and Cross-national Perspectives is the forty-fifth addition to the Crime and Justice series. Contributors include Thomas Weigend on criminal sentencing in Germany since 2000; Julian V. Roberts and Andrew Ashworth on the evolution of sentencing policy and practice in England and Wales from 2003 to 2015; Jacqueline Hodgson and Laurène Soubise on understanding the sentencing process in France; Anthony N. Doob and Cheryl Marie Webster on Canadian sentencing policy in the twenty-first century; Arie Freiberg on Australian sentencing policies and practices; Krzysztof Krajewski on sentencing in Poland; Alessandro Corda on Italian policies; Michael Tonry on American sentencing; and Tapio Lappi-Seppälä on penal policy and sentencing in the Nordic countries.
For the American criminal justice system, 1975 was a watershed year. Offender rehabilitation and individualized sentencing fell from favor. The partisan politics of “law and order” took over. Among the results four decades later are the world’s harshest punishments and highest imprisonment rate. Policymakers’ interest in what science could tell them plummeted just when scientific work on crime, recidivism, and the justice system began to blossom. Some policy areas—sentencing, gun violence, drugs, youth violence—became evidence-free zones. In others—developmental crime prevention, policing, recidivism studies, evidence mattered. Crime and Justice in America: 1975-2025 tells how policy and knowledge did and did not interact over time and charts prospects for the future. What accounts for the timing of particular issues and research advances? What did science learn or reveal about crime and justice, and how did that knowledge influence policy? Where are we now, and, perhaps even more important, where are we going? The contributors to this volume, the leading scholars in their fields, bring unsurpassed breadth and depth of knowledge to bear in answering these questions. They include Philip J. Cook, Francis T. Cullen, Jeffrey Fagan, David Farrington, Daniel S. Nagin, Peter Reuter, Lawrence W. Sherman, and Franklin E. Zimring. For thirty-five years, the Crime and Justice series has provided a platform for the work of sociologists, psychologists, criminal lawyers, justice scholars, and political scientists as it explores the full range of issues concerning crime, its causes, and it remedies.
