These 10 papers examine crime patterns and changes in crime and reactions to crime over the past half-century, with emphasis on the ways in which crime and its effects have evolved along with broader structural and cultural changes during this time period and on probable crime developments and trends in the 21st century.
The articles were selected through a project sponsored by the National Institute of Justice to present a comprehensive, scholarly examination of the current status of criminal justice. The lead article reviews theoretical developments in 20th century criminology in terms of four categories: (1) theories of individual differences in offending; (2) theories of variation in offending through the life cycle; (3) theories of diversity of crime rates among social entities; and (4) theories of differences among social situations in criminal outcomes. The analysis focuses on how theories have evolved over time and on the connections, integrative trends, and cross-fertilizations among theoretical strands. Additional papers review juvenile delinquency patterns and juvenile justice trends, urban crime trends and research efforts to understand these trends, and the evolution of juvenile justice systems along with and sometimes in contrast to changing crime rates. Other papers examine the evolving links between immigration and crime in the past half-century, how women’s crime rates have changes along with the social and economic status and women, and changes in rural crime over the past four decades. Further papers discuss the changing politics of crime and punishment and the impact of these political processes on corrections in the postwar period, the link between drug abuse and crime, and the ways in which information technology has penetrated criminal justice processing since World War II. Tables, figures, chapter notes and reference lists, and appended lists of contents of the other three volumes in this series