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  3. Cambridge Studies in Criminology

The Cambridge Studies in Criminology aims to publish the highest-quality research on criminology and criminal justice topics. Typical volumes report major quantitative, qualitative, and ethnographic research, or make a substantial theoretical contribution. In addition to research monographs, edited collections may also be published if they make distinctive offering to the literature. All relevant areas of criminology and criminal justice are to be included, for example, the causes of offending, juvenile justice, the development of offenders, measurement and analysis of crime, victimization research, policing, crime prevention, sentencing, imprisonment, probation, and parole. The series is global in outlook, with an emphasis on work that is comparative or holds significant implications for theory or policy.

  • General Editors: Alfred Blumstein, Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania, David Farrington, University of Cambridge

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42 results in Cambridge Studies in Criminology

Page 1 of 3

The Prison and the Gallows
  • The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America
  • Marie Gottschalk
  • Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    19 June 2006
  • The United States has built a carceral state that is unprecedented among Western countries and in US history. Nearly one in 50 people, excluding children and the elderly, is incarcerated today, a rate unsurpassed anywhere else in the world. What are some of the main political forces that explain this unprecedented reliance on mass imprisonment? Throughout American history, crime and punishment have been central features of American political development. This 2006 book examines the development of four key movements that mediated the construction of the carceral state in important ways: the victims' movement, the women's movement, the prisoners' rights movement, and opponents of the death penalty. This book argues that punitive penal policies were forged by particular social movements and interest groups within the constraints of larger institutional structures and historical developments that distinguish the United States from other Western countries.

Companions in Crime
  • The Social Aspects of Criminal Conduct
  • Mark Warr
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    18 February 2002
  • Criminologists often allude to 'peer influence' in explanations of crime and delinquency, but the meaning of that concept rarely receives careful attention. Companions in Crime organizes the extensive literature on peer influence and group delinquency into a coherent form for the first time. Chapters focus on the role of peers over the life course, the group nature of delinquent behavior, and the applicability of peer influence for explaining the major features of delinquent behavior. The most extensive chapter of the book examines possible mechanisms of peer influence and the evidence in favor of each. The principal thesis of Companions in Crime is that deviant behavior is predominantly social behavior, and criminologists must eventually determine the significance of that fact.

Prisoner Reentry and Crime in America
  • Edited by Jeremy Travis, Christy Visher
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    01 August 2005
  • Prisoner Reentry and Crime in America is intended to shed light on a question that fuels the public's concern about the number of returning prisoners. What are the public safety consequences of the fourfold increase in the number of individuals entering and leaving the nation's prisons each year? Many have speculated about the nexus between prisoner reentry and public safety. Journalistic accounts of the reentry phenomenon have painted a picture of a tidal wave of hardened criminals coming back home to resume their destructive lifestyles. Law enforcement officials have attributed increases in violence in their communities to the influx of returning prisoners. Politicians have recommended policies that keep former prisoners out of high crime neighborhoods in the belief that crime would be reduced. The chapters in this book address these issues and suggest policies that will keep released prisoners from committing new crimes.

Legacies of Crime
  • A Follow-Up of the Children of Highly Delinquent Girls and Boys
  • Peggy C. Giordano
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    26 February 2010
  • Legacies of Crime explores the lives of seriously delinquent girls and boys in the United States who were followed over a twenty-year period as they grew to adulthood. In-depth interviews with these women and men and their children - a majority now adolescents themselves - depict the adults' economic and social disadvantages and continued criminal involvement, and in turn the unique vulnerabilities of their children. Giordano identifies family dynamics that foster the intergenerational transmission of crime, violence, and drug abuse, rejecting the notion that such continuities are based solely on genetic similarities or even lax, inconsistent parenting. The author breaks new ground in directly exploring - and in the process revising - the basic tenets of classic social learning theories, and confronting the complications associated with the parent's gender. Legacies of Crime also identifies factors associated with resilience in the face of what is often a formidable package of risks favoring intergenerational continuity.

Street Justice
  • Retaliation in the Criminal Underworld
  • Bruce A. Jacobs, Richard Wright
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    22 May 2006
  • Street criminals live in a dangerous world, but they cannot realistically rely on the criminal justice system to protect them from predation by fellow lawbreakers; they are on their own when it comes to dealing with crimes perpetrated against them and often use retaliation as a mechanism for deterring and responding to victimization. Although retaliation lies at the heart of much of the violence that plagues many inner-city neighborhoods across the United States, it has received scant attention from criminologists. As a result, the structure, process, and forms of retaliation in the real world setting of urban America remain poorly understood. Street Justice: Retaliation in the Criminal World, first published in 2006, explores the face of modern day retaliation from the perspective of currently active criminals who have experienced it first hand, as offenders, victims, or both.

Life in the Gang
  • Family, Friends, and Violence
  • Scott H. Decker, Barrik van Winkle
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    28 August 1996
  • This study is based on three years of field work with 99 active gang members and 24 family members. The book describes the attractiveness of gangs, the process of joining, their chaotic and loose organisation, and their members' predominant activities - mostly hanging out, drinking, and using drugs. The authors also discuss gang members' rather slapdash involvement in major property crime and their disorganised participation in drug traffic, as well as the often fatal consequences of their violent life-style. Although the book focuses on the individual, organisational, and institutional aspects of gang membership, it also explores gang members' involvement with other school and neighborhood structures. Extensive interviews with family members provide groundbreaking insights into the gang members' lives. As much as possible, however, the story is told in the gang members' own words.

Economic Espionage and Industrial Spying
  • Hedieh Nasheri
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    08 November 2004
  • This 2005 book provides an analytic overview and assessment of the changing nature of crime in the burgeoning information society. Bringing together views from leading national and international authorities, Hedieh Nasheri explains the historical and theoretical background surrounding issues of economic espionage, trade secret theft and industrial spying and its impact on society. She looks at legislative history, the progression of electronic and corporate criminal behavior by introducing the concept of information theft and computer crimes, exploring its definition, its identification and its development within criminology. Nasheri presents an assessment of the state of economic espionage activities within a criminological context and based on that assessment addresses areas where additional action is required. The book also draws attention to a variety of issues raised by economic espionage and technological development. It draws on a variety of disciplines, including criminology, criminal justice, sociology, law and society, economics and political science.

Lengthening the Arm of the Law
  • Enhancing Police Resources in the Twenty-First Century
  • Julie Ayling, Peter Grabosky, Clifford Shearing
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    17 November 2008
  • Relentless fiscal pressures faced by the public police over the last few decades have meant that police organisations have had to find new ways to obtain and harness the resources needed to achieve their goals. Through entering into relationships of coercion, commercial exchange, and gift with a wide variety of external institutions and individuals operating in both public and private capacities, police organisations have risen to this challenge. Indeed, police organisations are increasingly operating within a business paradigm. But what are the benefits of these relationships and the nature of the risks that might accompany reliance upon them? This book examines these new modes of exchange between police and 'outsiders' and explores how far these relationships can be taken before certain fundamental values - equity in the distribution of policing, cost-effectiveness in the delivery of police services, and the legitimacy of the police institution itself - are placed in jeopardy.

Choosing White-Collar Crime
  • Neal Shover, Andrew Hochstetler
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    14 November 2005
  • 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.

Schools and Delinquency
  • Denise C. Gottfredson
  • Published online:
    05 August 2011
    Print publication:
    20 November 2000
  • Schools and Delinquency, first published in 2001, provides a comprehensive review and critique of the current research about the causes of delinquency, substance use, drop-out, and truancy, and the role of the school in preventing these behavior patterns. Examining school-based prevention programs and practices for grades K-12, Denise Gottfredson identifies a broad array of effective strategies improving the school environment, as well as some that specifically target youths at risk of developing problem behaviors. She also explains why several popular school-based prevention strategies are ineffective and should be abandoned. Gottfredson analyzes, within the larger context of the community, the special challenges to effective prevention programming that arise in disorganized settings, identifying ways to overcome these obstacles and to make the most troubled schools safer and more productive environments.

Errors of Justice
  • Nature, Sources and Remedies
  • Brian Forst
  • Published online:
    05 July 2011
    Print publication:
    10 November 2003
  • In this book, Brian Forst takes 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, on the one hand, and the error of imposing costs on innocent people and excessive costs on offenders, on the other. Noting that we have sophisticated systems for managing errors in statistical inference and quality control processes and no parallel system for managing errors of a more socially costly variety - on matters of guilt and innocence - the author lays the foundation for a common sense approach to the management of errors in the criminal justice system, from policing and prosecution to sentencing and corrections. He examines the sources of error in each sector, the harms they impose on society, and frameworks for analyzing and reducing them.

Violence and Childhood in the Inner City
  • Edited by Joan McCord
  • Published online:
    01 June 2011
    Print publication:
    13 October 1997
  • The contributors to this book believe that something can be done to make life in American cities safer, to make growing up in the urban ghettos less risky, and to reduce the violence that so often permeates urban childhoods. 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. Both biological and psychological characteristics of individuals are considered. The authors also discuss how the urban environment, especially the street culture, affects childhood development. They review a variety of intervention strategies, considering when it would be appropriate to use them and towards whom they should be targeted. Drawing upon ethnographic commentary, laboratory experiments, historical reviews, and program descriptions, this book presents a variety of opinions on the causes of urban violence and the changes necessary to reduce it.

Criminologists on Terrorism and Homeland Security
  • Edited by Brian Forst, Jack R. Greene, James P. Lynch
  • Published online:
    04 February 2011
    Print publication:
    07 February 2011
  • This volume presents 19 original essays addressing what is widely regarded as the most serious problem confronting America today and for years to come – terrorism – from the unique perspective of criminology. The chapters collected here address such issues as the prevention of terrorism, the applicability of community policing and routine activities models of crime to the problem of terrorism, how to balance liberty and security, and how to think about and manage the fear of terrorism, as well as the coordination of federal and local efforts to prevent and counter terrorism. Criminologists on Terrorism and Homeland Security will be of interest to anyone concerned about violence prevention in general and terrorism in particular, policing, prosecution, adjudication, sentencing and restorative justice.

Prison State
  • The Challenge of Mass Incarceration
  • Bert Useem, Anne Morrison Piehl
  • Published online:
    31 January 2011
    Print publication:
    10 March 2008
  • During the past 25 years, the prison population in America shot upward to reach a staggering 1.53 million by 2005. This book takes a broad, critical look at incarceration, the huge social experiment of American society. The authors investigate the causes and consequences of the prison buildup, often challenging previously held notions from scholarly and public discourse. By examining such themes as social discontent, safety and security within prisons, and the impact on crime and on the labour market, Piehl and Useem use evidence to address the inevitable larger question, where should incarceration go next for American society, and where is it likely to go?

The Criminal Recidivism Process
  • Edward Zamble, Vernon L. Quinsey
  • Published online:
    02 February 2010
    Print publication:
    28 August 1997
  • This book addresses how and why criminal offenders repeat their actions after being released from prison. It is part of an attempt to explain criminal behavior within the context of a contemporary psychological understanding of behavior, rather than more traditional theories of crime. Over 300 serious male criminal offenders were interviewed and tested after they returned to prison for new crimes. The results indicate that their new offenses may be the result of something like a 'breakdown'. From this, it can be argued that we could monitor released prisoners to predict or even to prevent their return to crime. This report, written for a general audience, has some important implications for release supervision, rehabilitation programs, and the prediction of recidivism.

Mean Streets
  • Youth Crime and Homelessness
  • John Hagan, Bill McCarthy
  • Published online:
    06 January 2010
    Print publication:
    13 July 1997
  • Mean Streets is a field study of young people who have left home and school and are living on the streets of Toronto and Vancouver. This book includes the personal narratives and explanatory accounts, in their own words, of some of the more than four hundred young people who participated in the summer-long study, which featured intensive personal interviews. The study examines why youth take to the streets, their struggles to survive on the street, their victimization and involvement in crime, their associations with other street youth, especially within 'street families', their contacts with the police, and their efforts to leave the street and rejoin conventional society. Major theories of youth crime are analyzed and reappraised in the context of a new social capital theory of crime.

Understanding Crime Statistics
  • Revisiting the Divergence of the NCVS and the UCR
  • Edited by James P. Lynch, Lynn A. Addington
  • Published online:
    23 December 2009
    Print publication:
    04 December 2006
  • In Understanding Crime Statistics, Lynch and Addington draw on the work of leading experts on U.S. crime statistics to provide much-needed research on appropriate use of this data. Specifically, the contributors explore the issues surrounding divergence in the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which have been the two major indicators of the level and of the change in level of crime in the United States for the past 30 years. 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. Understanding Crime Statistics builds on this discussion of divergence to explain how the two data systems can be used as they were intended - in complementary rather than competitive ways.

Race and Policing in America
  • Conflict and Reform
  • Ronald Weitzer, Steven A. Tuch
  • Published online:
    18 December 2009
    Print publication:
    12 June 2006
  • Race and Policing in America is about relations between police and citizens, with a focus on racial differences. It utilizes both the authors' own research and other studies to examine Americans' opinions, preferences, and personal experiences regarding the police. Guided by group-position theory and using both existing studies and the authors' own quantitative and qualitative data (from a nationally representative survey of whites, blacks, and Hispanics), this book examines the roles of personal experience, knowledge of others' experiences (vicarious experience), mass media reporting on the police, and neighborhood conditions (including crime and socioeconomic disadvantage) in structuring citizen views in four major areas: overall satisfaction with police in one's city and neighborhood, perceptions of several types of police misconduct, perceptions of police racial bias and discrimination, and evaluations of and support for a large number of reforms in policing.

Drug-Crime Connections
  • Trevor Bennett, Katy Holloway
  • Published online:
    18 December 2009
    Print publication:
    24 September 2007
  • Drug-Crime Connections challenges the assumption that there is a widespread association between drug use and crime. Instead, it argues that there are many highly specific connections. The authors draw together in a single volume a wide range of findings from a study of nearly 5,000 arrestees interviewed as part of the New English and Welsh Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (NEW-ADAM) programme. It provides an in-depth study of the nature of drug-crime connections, as well as an investigation into drug use generally among criminals and the kinds of crimes that they commit. They explore topics that previously have fallen outside the drug-crime debate, such as gender and drugs, ethnicity and drugs, gangs, guns, drug markets, and treatment needs. The book provides both an up-to-date review of the literature and a concise summary of a major study on the connection between drug use and crime.

Marking Time in the Golden State
  • Women's Imprisonment in California
  • Candace Kruttschnitt, Rosemary Gartner
  • Published online:
    15 December 2009
    Print publication:
    08 November 2004
  • 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.

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