Understanding Crime Prevention: Social Control, Risk and Late Modernity

• NCJ Number: 180457
• Author(s): Gordon Hughes
• Editor(s): Mike Maguire
• Date Published: 1998
• Length: 188 pages
• Sale Source: Open University Press
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom
• Note: Part of the Crime and Justice series

Annotation

This is a comprehensive overview of current and historical debates about crime prevention in particular and social control more generally.

Abstract

The book puts forward late modernity, risk society, communitarianism and globalization as important ways of linking trends in crime prevention to wider social transformations. It focuses on the managerialization of crime prevention in recent decades, the extent to which crime control may become dominated by privatized security and insurance against risks, and the attractions and pitfalls of informal community-based approaches. The book is divided into seven chapters, each with a summary and bibliography: (1) Mapping the Terrain of Crime Prevention; (2) Classicism and the Deterrent Presences of the Modern State; (3) Positivism and the Cure of “Criminal Man”; (4) Situational Crime Prevention: The Pragmatics of Crime Control; (5) Multi-agency Partnerships: Managing Corporate Crime Prevention; (6) Communitarianism: Bringing “The Social” Back Into Crime Prevention? and (7) The Futures of Crime Control in Late Modernity. Bibliographies, figures, glossary, references, index