In the early 1990s policy changes were introduced in the UK in an attempt to increase arrest rates in domestic violence cases. This book examines the criminal justice response to this prevalent form of violence in the light of these changes. In particular, the book discusses the needs and expectations of victims, and how their choices impact on decisions made by police and prosecutors.

In this unique collection of essays, a diverse group of distinguished social theorists reflect upon the intellectual challenges and opportunities presented to criminology by recent transformations in the social and intellectual landscapes of contemporary societies. As each essay in its different way reveals, crime and punishment have ceased to be topics that can be contained within the bounds of any specialized discipline. Crime and punishment now play such integral roles in the politics of contemporary societies, are so densely entangled with our daily routines, so deeply lodged in our...

This book examines a range of criminal activities conducted in different European contexts. Offences committed by individuals and groups endowed with different resources and status are examined. Each chapter contains an implicit rejection of generalizations and attention is paid to variations and differences. Rather than searching for a unified theory of crime, the author highlights the interpretive oscillations, which always occur when we are faced with criminal behaviour. In other words, each time we subscribe to one cause of crime we may realize that also the opposite cause possesses some...

Restorative justice has become the emerging social movement for reform in the criminal justice system over the past decade. It refers to a range of informal justice practices designed to require offenders to take responsibility for their wrong-doing and to meet the needs of affected victims and communities. This book, based on empirical research findings, investigates whether restorative justice can offer victims of crime more than the formal court-based justice system.

Investigating Murder provides a unique insight into how police detectives investigate and solve murders. Based upon observation of murder squads at work, interviews with detectives and detailed analysis of police case files, it provides an original and innovative account of the practices and processes involved in the investigation of serious violent crimes, as well as some of the problems that are often encountered in the conduct of this work.

This book offers a sociological analysis of the history of international police cooperation in the period from the middle of the 19th century until the end of World War II. It is a detailed exploration of international cooperation strategies involving police institutions from the United States and Germany as well as other European countries.

How have the findings of academic criminologists affected the development of public policy? This is the central question addressed by this collection of essays, which explore the complex relationship between research and policy making.
The Criminological Foundations of Penal Policy is a volume in honour of Roger Hood, Professor of Criminology and Director of the Centre for Criminological Research in the University of Oxford.

CCTV and Policing considers how the introduction of closed circuit television (CCTV) has affected policing practices in Britain. Based on original field research, the volume examines the various factors that have shaped police CCTV use, and challenges claims that the spread of public area CCTV is indicative of a movement towards increasingly authoritarian forms of policing.

This book constitutes a critical case study of the modern search for public sector reform. It includes a detailed account of a study aimed at developing a meaningful way of evaluating difficult-to-measure moral dimensions of the quality of prisons.

This groundbreaking study examines patterns of offending among persistent juvenile offenders. Employing advanced quantitative techniques to offenders with very high rates of recidivism, Ezell and Cohen demonstrate that many of these apparently hardened criminals will "grow out" of crime by the time they reach their early to mid-20s. This finding has profound implications for penal policies that impose life sentences on multiple offenders.