NCJ Number
225035
Date Published
1992
Length
625 pages
Annotation
This text provides an overview of crime and criminology, focusing on what is known about crime and criminals, theories of crime, and the criminal justice system (police, courts, and corrections).
Abstract
Created for students interested in the field of crime and criminology, this text is divided into four parts. Part 1 begins by making a case for evidence-based thinking about crime, for criminology differs in its everyday talk about crime, especially in its use of evidence to test ideas about crime. It describes some of the difficulties in counting crime, as well as the different methods of counting. It presents evidence on the relation of crime to four demographic variables: age, race, sex, and social class from different sources of information. Part 2 examines in more detail the crimes usually known as “Index crimes”, and evidence from descriptive research is used to examine organized crime and white-collar crime. Part 3 attempts to present the classic statements on crime in a way that makes them as vital to students as they have been to criminologists. The order of presentation for both the biological/psychological and the sociological theories is primarily chronological. Part 4 focuses on the effect of police, courts, and corrections on crime, such as (1) an historical perspective on the police, and a discussion of police misconduct; (2) an outline of the reasons for adversarial court systems and for some of the due-process protections that derive from the Constitution; and (3) how prisons serve as an antidote to crime, and to what extent and at what cost does the criminal justice system rehabilitate, deter, or incapacitate criminals. Tables, figures, notes, and indexes