Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Criminology

Martin Alan Greenberg explores the origins of the two major types of citizen volunteer police--auxiliary and reserve--and examines the history and current practices of volunteer policing. The heart of the book deals with the history of New York City's volunteer police and the inner workings of the New York City Auxiliary Police, a subject the author knows intimately from his twelve years' experience as a participant-observer. Greenberg analyzes and evaluates current issues in volunteer policing. Based on his findings, he projects increased community involvement in volunteer police forces.

Is cost-benefit analysis the best means to determine and formulate public policies? To answer this question Jeffrey Leigh Sedgwick examines its application to crime and criminal justice and the implications of that application. In this interdisciplinary study, Sedgwick first assesses the value of applying economic models to the social problem of crime. He compares economic models to sociological ones and then addresses the question of whether economic models are compatible with the values of a liberal political order. He shows that cost-benefit analysis suffers from technical and ethical...

The "Handbook" clearly points out that although the literature on crime prevention is voluminous, the social conditions that invoke criminality are resistant to social change. The articles repeatedly demand a critical evaluation of prevention theories and programs, and call for accountability within the crime-prevention profession. The collection will serve as a valuable resource for policymakers and practitioners as well as for academics. The volume includes an excellent directory of crime/delinquency-prevention organizations and a supplementary bibliography. "Choice"

In recent years,...

Because of its eclectic nature, criminal justice can be a difficult discipline to research. This readable guide should help students through the maze of data. "Choice"

Lutzker and Ferrall skillfully introduce the student, professor, or researcher to the sources in the field and suggest logical ways of approaching them when doing research. "Reference Books Journal"

Larry K. Hartsfield explores the impact of professional crime on American culture from multiple viewpoints. During the period under study the criminal played a central role in increasingly popular detective novels and also moved to center stage in serious fiction about the nature of humanity and the development of personality. Through autobiographies, thieves depicted themselves with characteristics that they perceived their audiences to expect. The criminal became especially prominent in a new subgenre of fiction, the literature of exposure, which included reform tracts about corruption...

Dalton combines the scholarly literature on public law and judicial impact with recent studies of policy implementation at the state level. He emphasizes the underlying constitutional, organizational, psychological, and political factors that shape public policy outcomes, arguing that a sound grasp of these factors can lead to an understanding of the gap between theory and practice in democratic politics. He examines the historical development and revision of the U.S. Supreme Court civil liberties rulings from the 1960s to the early 1980s as well as executive and congressional policy to...

The cause and causation of crime, covered from the time of Benjamin Rush, one of the most eminent of early American physicians, to Williams Healy; from the last decade of the eighteenth to the second decade of the twentieth century. The material is presented from biological, anthropological, and psychological perspectives.

This book is a welcome addition to the literature on women and criminality. It should be of particular interest to the general reader as a concise, well-organized and clearly written review of important aspects of this social problem. It would be excellent as a supplementary text in criminal justice, criminology, victimology, and women's studies courses. In addition to a selected bibliography, scholars will appreciate the excellent bibliographical essay which provides a basis for further research.

"Criminal Justice Policy Review"

The study of women in relation to crime and the...

"Minorities and Criminality" provides a cameo of valuable information about the relationship between minority status and criminality and the interaction of minorities with the criminal justice system. . . . A key strength of this book is that it provides a great deal of insight into the proclivities of different minority groups to engage in different types of criminal behavior. . . . This book would make an excellent source for persons newly becoming acquainted with the nature, scope, and dynamics of minority crime and victimization. "Criminal Justice Review"

"Minorities and...

As the problem of crime continues to worsen in the 1980s, the need for up-to-date, comprehensive information on its dynamics and incidence increases. This work, the fourth in a four-volume series, is the first study to focus exclusively on demographic trends in criminality and victimization for crime as a whole. Concerned with the broad picture of crime in America as well as specific demographic correlates and characteristics, it develops profiles of patterns in criminality and suggests ways of applying this demographic data to promote more effective crime control.

Flowers begins by...

Today juvenile delinquents are viewed and treated much like adult criminals. The goal of rehabilitating and reforming youthful offenders--once the primary function of juvenile courts--has largely been abandoned in the past decade in favor of a punishment-orientation that includes extended periods of incarceration. This study, written by a distinguished group of criminologists, legal experts, and social scientists, attempts to determine the reasons for the decline in interest in rehabilitation, what can be done to revive it, and whether rehabilitation is ultimately a practical approach to...

As the first director of National Drug Control Policy is appointed to the federal cabinet, this timely "Handbook" surveys the U.S. government's efforts to control illegal drugs. In his valuable contribution toward effectively dealing with this problem, Inciardi successfully avoids the traps that have misled so many in the past, such as devising a single prefabricated solution and waging yet another war on drugs. Instead, he offers a useful way of thinking about the problem, which, while not a solution in itself, provides the tools necessary to develop a realistic and effective national...

A fascinating and well-written book by an established researcher in the field. Alpert treats problems faced by police in rapidly changing multiethnic communities such as Miami-Dade County, the locus of the study. The focus on the relationship of informal and formal social control systems provides more insight into the vicissitudes of ethnic neighborhoods and their support of the police than might ever be gained from hours of "Miami Vice." The book offers sociohistorical background material, conceptual and analytical frameworks, methods, data, analysis, and data interpretation. Alpert finds...

A powerful and succinct reminder of the way in which the 'corporate property rights structure' has come to dominate American society and politics. . . . Brings out the connections among law, politics, and economics.

"Howard J. Vogel Hamline University School of Law"

This provocative overview of fundamental principles in American law points out how the law is administered unfairly and how wrongly it is conceived if it is to meet basic needs in our society today. Gerald Houseman examines legal education and practice, and law relating to business, government, labor, and elections. He...

This annotated bibliography of crime in Victorian Britain covers the journal literature of the nineteenth century, a period marking the apex of the great quarterlies and the advent of the serious magazines on the subject. The 1614 entries cover 45 journals using the authoritative registers of titles of the times. The bibliography surveys every aspect of crime around the country. Indexes to author, other personnel, and subject make the guide easily accessible.

What was it like to live under the police and a criminal justice system in a socialist society and in a country governed by Marxist-Leninists? This is the first book-length study of criminal justice in the German Democratic Republic. Based on first-hand research conducted over a six-year period from 1985 to the present, the case study analyzes how the society has been transformed politically, socially, and economically since the 1989 revolution and reincorporation with the rest of Germany. This volume should be of interest to students, teachers, and professionals in criminal justice and...

This is a study of novels by Chester Himes, Malcolm Braly, and others on the experience of doing time in American prisons. The authors are all convicts or ex-convicts who were not professional writers before their incarceration. In fact, Massey notes, the confinement seems to have motivated them to put their experiences into words. Most of the prisoners were incarcerated for armed robbery, one of the most common felonies in the United States. The relationship between that crime and the American Dream has social and political implications, but these writers are neither prisoners of...

The President's Commission on Organized Crime predicted that Asian crime groups would be the United States' foremost organized crime problem by the 1990s. There are few comprehensive studies on the nature and scope of these groups. Ko-lin Chin warns that our limited law enforcement resources will be ineffective without a precise understanding of the norms, values, structure, criminal patterns, and interrelationships of these groups. His study takes a major step toward this effort. A sociological investigation of Triads, tongs, and street gangs, Chin's volume explores the where, how, and...