NCJ Number
78310
Date Published
1981
Length
502 pages
Annotation
Organized around concepts rather than specific types of crime, this criminology text includes material on the question of why people commit crime, the ways in which people react to crime, and the differing goals of the criminal justice system.
Abstract
An integrated approach to crime causation is presented that explores five different but interrelated types of personal justification for unlawful behavior: denial of responsibility, denial of injury, denial of the victim, condemnation of the condemners, and the appeal to higher loyalties. In addition, the text assesses evidence for Hirschi's control theory of delinquency and explores the role of the school, family, and other social institutions in crime causation. The text also investigates how criminals learn to commit crime by examining Sutherland's theory of differential association, the labeling perspective, and the rewards-risks model of criminal behavior. Opportunities for crime commission are analyzed in a study of target selection, victim-offender relationships, and crime planning and execution. The text also focuses on public reaction to crime through such mechanisms as informal community controls, support for the law, and vigilante groups. In addition, the criminal justice system is examined from the differing perspectives of deterrence, incapacitation, restitution or just deserts, retribution, and rehabilitation. Additional topics include the nature of criminology, the costs of crime, the concept and measurement of a crime rate, the social distribution of crime rates, and the biological and psychological explanations of criminal behavior. The economic and social causes of white-collar, organized, and conventional crime are explored, and recent studies of criminal careers are presented. Finally, three alternative models of reducing crime are delineated by an examination of the recent political use of the crime issue. The text weighs the possibility of reducing crime by reforming the criminal justice system and by attacking the social causes of criminal behavior. Figures, tables, and an index are given. References follow each chapter. (Author abstract modified)