NCJ Number
136131
Editor(s)
W S Laufer,
F Adler
Date Published
1990
Length
192 pages
Annotation
Criminology has developed strong methodological tools over the past decades and has established itself as a competitive and sophisticated social science as demonstrated by the original work in criminological theory in this book.
Abstract
The first chapter discusses the origins of criminological theory and the work of Cesare Beccaria, particularly his 18th century essay on crime and punishment. Beccaria applied hedonistic doctrine to penology and insisted on deterrence and just deserts. He aimed at a scale of punishments to correspond to the gravity or weight of given criminal actions and posited that criminal justice alone cannot prevent criminality. The second chapter examines the plausibility of corporate crime theory and considers whether corporations are capable of criminal action and whether they can be properly held responsible. The chapter also discusses what legal and ethical responsibilities corporations have and what punishments are appropriate for corporate crime. The third chapter explores parental work control and delinquency. The emphasis is on social control in the family context as it affects behavior, child rearing, and discipline, and the likelihood of juvenile delinquency. The fourth chapter considers legal socialization theory in the Soviet Union. Attention is paid to legal socialization as the development of values, attitudes, and behavior toward law and to legal knowledge and juvenile delinquency. The final chapters address theoretical explanations of race differences in heroin use, the media world of crime in terms of social learning theory and symbolic interaction, epistemological problems in criminology, whether criminology is in a state of theoretical decay or renaissance, and controversial issues in the theory and study of criminology. 402 references, 12 notes, 12 tables, and 1 figure