Summary
Contents
“The four authors of this concise volume provide an authoritative introduction to diverse key concepts about crime and its relationship to society. Each chapter starts with a definition (e.g., deviance, social control, normalization), providing readers with the vocabulary and conceptual framework for fully understanding chapter contents... a very good way to expose students and the public (and scholars from outside fields) to definitions, ideas, and theories of crime and society.” - K. Evans, Indiana State University, Choice Key Concepts in Crime and Society offers an authoritative introduction to key issues in the area of crime as it connects to society. By providing critical insight into the key issues within each concept as well as highlighted cross-references to other key concepts, students will be helped to grasp a clear understanding of each of the topics covered and how they relate to broader areas of crime and criminality. The book is divided into three parts: • Understanding Crime and Criminality: introduces topics such as the social construction of crime and deviance, social control, the fear of crime, poverty and exclusion, white collar crime, victims of crime, race/gender and crime. • Types of Crime and Criminality: explores examples including human trafficking, sex work, drug crime, environmental crime, cyber crime, war crime, terrorism, and interpersonal violence. • Responses to Crime: looks at areas such as crime and the media, policing, moral panics, deterrence, prisons and rehabilitation. The book provides an up-to-date, critical understanding on a wide range of crime related topics covering the major concepts students are likely to encounter within the fields of sociology, criminology and across the social sciences.
Race/Ethnicity and Crime
Race/Ethnicity and Crime
Definition: Ethnicity is often used to refer to people who loosely share particular characteristics including geographical and ancestral origins, cultural traditions and languages. As these characteristics are not fixed, homogeneous or easily measured, ethnicity is a fluid concept. It is the modern term used to categorise and differentiate between groups, replacing the positivist notion of race. As a biological category, which emerged during the eighteenth century, race has traditionally referred to the division of human populations into sub-species based on visible physical characteristics such as skin colour (Bhopal 2004: 442). The belief was that there was a biological difference between groups of people, often on the grounds of evolution. Ethnicity and race are crucial elements for criminological studies, as ...
