NCJ Number
230451
Editor(s)
John Muncie,
Deborah Talbot,
Reece Walters
Date Published
2010
Length
271 pages
Annotation
This textbook explores common concepts of crime by exploring the various ways in which "crime" manifests itself in diverse sites of cities, cyberspace, the body, the corporation, the environment, and the State, as it analyzes how and why certain "undesirable" behaviors, people, places, and events are identified as deserving the "criminal" label (and thereby criminal sanction) while others are not.
Abstract
The introductory chapter provides the context for a critical examination of what constitutes "crime." It examines how criminology and criminal justice have traditionally framed an understanding of "crime" and the "criminal" focuses on the implications of broadening an understanding of "crime" to take into account a wide range of social problems and social harms that my victimize individuals, social groups, or whole societies but are rarely considered central criminological or law-and-order issues; and it examines how an understanding of crime is significantly altered by exploring the ways in which it is recognized and responded to in broader international and global contexts. This is followed by a chapter that explores how crime, thinking about crime, and the relationship between crime and social control have a spatial or geographical dimension; and it considers the implications this could have for understanding processes of harm, power, and violence. This is followed by a chapter that explores the nature of cybercrime, i.e., crime facilitated and implemented through the Internet, and how it is being addressed as "crime" globally. A chapter entitled "Gender Abuse and People Trafficking" focuses on issues in which victimized women used as pawns in the sex trade can be treated as lawbreakers. Other chapters explore how crime and harm can stem from corporate power; crimes related to abuses of the natural environment; and state/government actions that constitute terrorism and crimes against humanity. Learning activities, supplementary "comments," chapter references, and a subject index