NCJ Number
157434
Date Published
1994
Length
209 pages
Annotation
This book highlights the uniqueness of America's crime problems relative to other times and places and emphasizes the importance of understanding how these problems have developed.
Abstract
Chapters consider the "Changing Face of Crime," classical theories of crime and disrepute, a new sociology of crime and disrepute, white-collar crime in a global economy, and criminal injustice in America. The author advises that although classical sociological theories provide a base from which an understanding of the roots of crime can begin, a new sociology of crime and disrepute that focuses on the criminal costs of social inequality is required to explain unique aspects of America's changing and more contemporary crime problems. This new approach directs attention to processes that divert capital resources away from socially and economically distressed communities. This approach also gives attention to the development of "deviance service centers" and "ethnic vice industries" organized around drugs, prostitution, and related activities, which are often adaptations to the absence of alternative avenues of social and economic mobility within distressed communities. The new sociology of crime and disrepute seeks to understand the social and economic roles these behaviors often play in the social organization of inner-city American life, and to explain the fact that often activities surrounding ethnic vice industries, especially involving drugs, have become more violent. A key part of this understanding is that America's changing place in the world economy and the plight of America's cities have combined to make contemporary prospects for upward social and economic mobility, especially through urban vice industries, less promising and more hazardous than was the case for disadvantaged groups earlier in this century. A 380-item bibliography and a glossary/index