Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T14:50:16.876Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Back on Track: Asking and Answering the Right Questions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Austin T. Turk
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Despite the obvious and repeated failures of biopsycho-criminologies, looking at and inside individuals for the causes of crime persists as the politically more tolerable and economically more rewarding (for grantsmen) alternative to the kind of theoretical and empirical work featured in this symposium. Instead of looking for what is wrong with people, these researchers are looking for what is wrong with society—and why. Once again the causal importance of contextual factors and social forces is being investigated and demonstrated. To theorists who have perceived and posited causal linkages among structured inequalities, social conflicts, and the definition as well as the occurrence of crimes, such research deserves the highest priority. These are indeed welcome contributions because they are asking the right questions. Now let us consider the answers they offer.

Type
Symposium: Crime, Class, and Community—An Emerging Paradigm
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , 1993 , pp. 355 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by The Law and Society Association

References

Bursik, Robert J. Jr., & Crasmick, Harold G. (1993) “Economic Deprivation and Neighborhood Crime Rates, 1960–1980,” 27 Law & Society Rev. 263.Google Scholar
Liska, Allen E., ed. (1992) Social Threat and Social Control. Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Myers, Martha A. (1993) “Inequality and the Punishment of Minor Offenders in the Early 20th Century,” 27 Law & Society Rev. 313.Google Scholar
Sampson, Robert J., & Laub, John H. (1993) “Structural Variations in Juvenile Court Processing: Inequality, the Underclass, and Social Control,” 27 Law & Society Rev. 285.Google Scholar
Skogan, Wesley G. (1990) Disorder and Decline: Crime and the Spiral of Decay in American Neighborhoods. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Turk, Austin T. (1976) “Law, Conflict, and Order: From Theorizing Toward Theories,” 13 Canadian Rev. of Sociology & Anthropology 282.Google Scholar
Turk, Austin T. (1977) “Class, Conflict, and Criminalization,” 10 Sociological Focus 209.Google Scholar
Turk, Austin T. (1982) Political Criminality: The Defiance and Defense of Authority. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Woodward, C. Vann (1957) The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Galaxy ed. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar