Books in the Cambridge Studies in Criminology series

This book examines the use of force by police officers. It includes a brief survey of prior research, and then goes on to present important data and findings. The authors put forward a conceptual framework, the Authority Maintenance Theory, for examining and assessing police use of force.

This book examines the control of prison disorder through the application of situational crime prevention principles. It presents a new model of situational prevention with applications beyond institutions to community settings, and examines problem behaviours, providing comprehensive reviews of prison control literature not depending upon a situational crime prevention interest.

Policing Gangs in America describes the assumptions, issues, problems, and events that define the police response to gangs in America today. This 2006 book is broadly focused on describing how gang units respond to community gang problems and analyzes the police response to gangs in the context of community policing.

For more than three decades, rational-choice theory has reigned as the dominant approach both for interpreting crime and as underpinning for crime-control programs. Although it has been applied to an array of street crimes, white-collar crime and those who commit it have thus far received less attention. Choosing White-Collar Crime is a systematic application of rational-choice theory to problems of explaining and controlling white-collar crime. It distinguishes ordinary and upperworld white-collar crime and presents reasons theoretically for believing that both have increased substantially in recent decades. Reasons for the increase include the growing supply of white-collar lure and non-credible oversight. Choosing White-Collar Crime also examines criminal decision making by white-collar criminals and their criminal careers. The book concludes with reasons for believing that problems of white-collar crime will continue unchecked in the increasingly global economy and calls for strengthened citizen movements to rein in the increases.

This study of co-offending relations among over 22,000 youths in Stockholm employs the methods of network analysis which makes it possible to study the ties, social bonds, interactions, differential associations and connections that are central to many of the sociologically oriented theories on the aetiology of crime.

Analysts have long noted that some societies have much higher rates of criminal violence than others. This series of essays explores the extent and causes of racial and ethnic differences in violent crime in the United States and several other contemporary societies.

Why do youths commit crimes? Delinquency and Crime contains essays by nine leading criminologists that seek to answer this question by describing current theories of crime and the research evidence that supports them. The contributors offer perspectives on antisocial peer socialization, social development, interactional theory, behavior genetics, and community determinants.

Why are females rarely antisocial and males antisocial so often? This is one of the key questions addressed in a fresh approach to sex differences in the causes, course and consequences of antisocial behaviour. This book will be an invaluable resource for all those interested in antisocial behaviour.

Unable to keep up with increased numbers of convicted offenders, governments and criminal justice systems are seeking new ways to control and punish offenders. One sanction adopted in Canada, parts of Europe and the US is community custody. This book analyses its effectiveness and its implications for offenders and society.

A fresh perspective on the assessment of criminal justice policy, examining the prospect of assessing policies based on their impact on errors of justice: the error of failing to bring offenders to justice and the error of imposing costs on innocent people and excessive costs on offenders.

This book examines how membership in adolescent street gangs influences human development. The authors examine the origins of gang membership and the social and psychological factors that lead some youths to join a gang. They show that gang membership increases the chances of developmental problems.

Studies of the criminal career to date have focused on common criminals and street crime; criminologists have overlooked the careers of white-collar offenders. David Weisburd and Elin Waring offer here the first detailed examination of the criminal careers of people convicted of white-collar crimes. Weisburd and Waring uncover some surprising findings, which upset common wisdom about white-collar criminals. Many scholars have assumed that white-collar criminals are unlikely to have multiple or long records or repeat offenses. As the authors demonstrate, a significant number of white-collar criminals have numerous brushes with the law and their careers show marked similarities to the circumstances and life patterns of street criminals. Their findings illustrate the misplaced emphasis of previous scholarship in focusing on the categorical distinctions between criminals and non-criminals. Rather, their data suggest the importance of the immediate context of crime and its role in leading otherwise conventional people to violate the law.

Between 1965 and 1990, federal judges in almost all of the states handed down sweeping rulings that affected virtually every prison and jail in the United States. This book provides an account of this process, and uses it to explore the more general issue of the role of courts in the modern bureaucratic state.

Why do corporations comply with the law? When companies violate the law, what kinds of interventions are most apt to return them to compliant status? Simpson's aim is to examine whether a shift towards criminal law with its emphasis on punishment and stigmatization will be a successful crime control strategy.

In this 2002 book, Britta Kyvsgaard examines the nature and aspects of the 'criminal career' through her longitudinal analysis of 45,000 Danish offenders. The data, unparalleled in size and quality, allows powerful analyses of criminal behavior, even among relatively small demographic subgroups. Her findings suggest rehabilitation as an alternative worthy of further research.

A comprehensive review and critique of the current research about the role of the school in preventing delinquency, substance use, drop-out, and truancy. Examining school-based prevention programs and practices for grades K-12, this 2001 book identifies a broad array of effective strategies for making schools safer and more productive environments.

This book examines recent changes in the UCR and the NCVS and assesses the effect these have had on divergence. By focusing on divergence, the authors encourage readers to think about how these data systems filter the reality of crime.

This 2005 book investigates the current state of industrial espionage, showing the far-reaching effects of advances in computing and wireless communications and provides an analytic overview and assessment of the changing nature of crime in the burgeoning information society.

In Companions in Crime, Mark Warr organizes the extensive literature on peer influence and group delinquency into a coherent form for the first time. The principal thesis of the book is that deviant behavior is predominantly social behavior, and criminologists must eventually determine the significance of that fact.

The contributors to this book believe that something can be done to make life, especially childhood, in American cities safer. They consider why there is so much violence, why some people become violent and others do not, and why violence is more prevalent in some areas. The authors also review a variety of intervention strategies.

A comprehensive overview of prevention programmes in pregnancy, infancy, pre-school, parent education and training and school programmes. It also focuses on family violence and whether risk factors and prevention programmes have different effects for females compared to males. Cost-benefit analyses of early prevention programmes are also reviewed.

Why do youths commit crimes? Delinquency and Crime contains essays by nine leading criminologists that seek to answer this question by describing current theories of crime and the research evidence that supports them. The contributors offer perspectives on antisocial peer socialization, social development, interactional theory, behavior genetics, and community determinants.

Recriminalizing Delinquency presents a case study of legislation that redefines previous acts of delinquency as crimes, and delinquents as juvenile offenders. It examines one state's use of waiver legislation that transfers jurisdiction over juveniles accused of violent crime to criminal court.

This field study, featuring intensive interviews of youth living on the streets of Toronto and Vancouver, examines why youth take to the streets, their struggles to survive, victimization, involvement in crime, contacts with the police, and efforts to rejoin conventional society. Major theories of youth crime are analyzed and reappraised.

In recent decades, the nature of criminal punishment has undergone change in the United States. This case study of women serving time in California in the 1960s and 1990s examines key points in this recent history. In this 2005 book, the authors begin with a look at imprisonment at the California Institution for Women in the early 1960s, when the rehabilitative model dominated official discourse. They compare women's experiences in the 1990s, at the California Institution for Women and the Valley State Prison, when the recent 'get tough' era was near its peak. Drawing on archival data, interviews, and surveys, their analysis considers the relationships among official philosophies and practices of imprisonment, women's responses to the prison regime, and relations between women prisoners. The experiences of women prisoners reflected the transformations Americans have witnessed in punishment over recent decades, but they also mirrored the deprivations and restrictions of imprisonment.

An analysis of multiple-offender sentencing combining rare insight into judicial thinking derived from experienced judges 'think aloud' records with a rule-based and numerical model of decision-making. A solution is offered to the problem of proportionality between offence seriousness and punishment severity in multiple offence cases.

This book addresses why criminal offenders repeat their actions after being released from prison. Over 300 serious male criminal repeat offenders were interviewed and tested. The results indicate that their new offenses may be the result of something like a 'breakdown'. The report, for a general audience, has important implications.

Third party policing represents a major shift in contemporary crime control practices. As the lines blur between criminal and civil law, responsibility for crime control no longer rests with state agencies but is shared between a wide range of organisations, institutions or individuals. The first comprehensive book of its kind, Third Party Policing examines this growing phenomenon, arguing that it is the legal basis of third party policing that defines it as a unique strategy. Opening up the debate surrounding this controversial topic, the authors examine civil and regulatory controls necessary to this strategy and explore the historical, legal, political and organizational environment that shape its adoption. This innovative book combines original research with a theoretical framework that reaches far beyond criminology into politics and economics. It offers an important addition to the world-wide debate about the nature and future of policing and will prove invaluable to scholars and policy makers.

This study is based on three years of field work with 99 active gang members and 24 family members. Through extensive interviews, the book describes the attractiveness of gangs, the process of joining, their chaotic and loose organization, and their members' usual activities.

Using multiple data sources and methods, this book involves a micro-historical analysis of the nature of change and stability in homicide situations over time. It focuses on the homicide situation as the unit of analysis, and explores similarities and differences in the context of homicide for different social groups. For example, using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we investigate whether various social groups (e.g., men vs women, teenagers vs adults, strangers vs intimates, Blacks vs Whites) kill under qualitatively different circumstances and, if so, what are the characteristics of these unique profiles. The analysis of over 400,000 US homicides is supplemented with qualitative analysis of narrative accounts of homicide events to more fully investigate the structure and process underlying these lethal situations. Our findings of unique and common homicide situations across different time periods and social groups are then discussed in terms of their implications for criminological theory and public policy.