Criminology - Research

Community safety emerged as a new approach to tackling and preventing local crime and disorder in the late 1980s and was adopted into mainstream policy by New Labour. This book provides the first sustained critical and theoretically informed analysis of the community safety agenda by leading authorities in the field.

This is the first single authored book to trace the emergence of Convict Criminology and explore its relevance beyond the USA to the UK and other parts of Europe. It presents uniquely reflexive scholarship combining personal experience with critical perspectives on contemporary penalogy, focussing explicitly on men.

Drawing upon extensive research amongst gang members, dealers and drug users, this timely book provides a comprehensive insight into the ‘County Lines’ phenomenon.

Shedding new light on this urgent topic on government agendas, this is an invaluable contribution to the literature on gangs, youth violence and organised crime.

Can the criminal justice system achieve justice based on its ability to determine the truth? This book investigates the concept of truth and scrutinises how well the criminal justice process facilitates truth-finding. It bridges the gap between what people expect from the justice system and what it can legitimately deliver.

Written by criminologists and policy analysts, Criminalisation and advanced marginality offers a constructive but critical application of Wacquant's ideas.

This timely and unique contribution brings together leading scholars from criminology and theology to challenge criminal justice orthodoxy. They question the dominance of retributive punishment, and consider alternatives which draw on Christian ideas of hope, mercy and restoration.

This perceptive study explores the extent to which boxing has the potential to reduce violent attitudes among young offenders. Jump assesses conflicting evidence and presents in-depth case studies of fighters to ask whether boxing’s values of discipline and respect can create a support network that helps young men refrain from reoffending.

Moral order is disturbed by criminal events, however traditionally, issues around morality have been neglected by criminologists. Using the moral perspective Boutellier bridges the gap between people’s emotional opinions on crime, and criminologists rationalised answers to questions of crime and security.

Drawing on complex narratives across film, TV, novels and graphic novels, this authoritative critical analysis demonstrates the value of fictional narratives as a tool for understanding, explaining and reducing crime and social harm. McGregor establishes an original theory of the criminological value of fiction.

Including novel case studies, this multi-disciplinary book assembles a rich collection of policing and security frontiers both geographical (e.g. the margins of cities) and conceptual (dispersion and credentialism) not seen or acknowledged previously, pushing criminology to the edge of its current understanding.

Within this book, whilst providing an implicit critique of mainstream criminology the authors seek to question if a ‘criminology of war’ is possible, and if so how this seemingly ‘new horizon’ of the discipline might be usefully informed by sociology.

Drawing on research from the Women, Family, Crime and Justice research network, this collection sheds new light on the experiences of women and families who encounter the UK criminal justice system. Contributions demonstrate how these groups are often ignored, oppressed and victimised, and offer insights and practical recommendations for change.