Using the framework of interest group conflict, this text combines a balanced, comprehensive overview of the field of deviance with first-hand expertise in the workings of the criminal justice system. Deviant Behavior, Seventh Edition, surveys a wide range of topics, from explanations regarding crime and criminal behavior, measurement of crime, violent crime and organizational deviance, to sexual behavior, mental health, and substance abuse. This new edition continues its traditio...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Unfair succinctly and persuasively recounts cutting-edge research testifying to the faulty and inaccurate procedures that underpin virtually all aspects of our criminal justice system, illustrating many with case studies.”—The Boston GlobeA child is gunned down by a police officer; an investigator ignores critical clues in a case; an innocent man confesses to a crime he did not commit; a jury acquits a killer....

Cost-effective methods for improving crime control in AmericaSince the crime explosion of the 1960s, the prison population in the United States has multiplied fivefold, to one prisoner for every hundred adults—a rate unprecedented in American history and unmatched anywhere in the world. Even as the prisoner head count continues to rise, crime has stopped falling, and poor people and minorities still bear the brunt of both crime and punishment. When Brute Force ...

This wide-ranging book shows why Paul Longmore is one of the most respected figures in disability studies today. Understanding disability as a major variety of human experience, he urges us to establish it as a category of social, political, and historical analysis in much the same way that race, gender, and class already have been. The essays here search for the often hidden pattern of systemic prejudice and probe into the institutionalized discrimination that affects the one in five Amer...

Crime in the United States has fluctuated considerably over the past thirty years, as have the policy approaches to deal with it. During this time criminologists and other scholars have helped to shed light on the role of incarceration, prevention, drugs, guns, policing, and numerous other aspects to crime control. Yet the latest research is rarely heard in public discussions and is often missing from the desks of policymakers. This book accessibly summarizes the latest scientific informat...

A cursory reading of the history of US colleges and universities reveals that campus crime has been part of collegiate life since the Colonial Era, yet it was not until the late 1980s that it suddenly became an issue on the public stage. Drawing from numerous mass media and scholarly sources and using a theoretical framework grounded in social constructionism, this text chronicles how four groups of activists - college student advocates, feminists, victims and their families, and public he...

The public health expert and prison reform activist offers "meticulous analysis" on our criminal justice system and the plague of American incarceration ( The Washington Post).An internationally recognized public health scholar, Ernest Drucker uses the tools of epidemiology to demonstrate that incarceration in the United States has become an epidemic—a plague upon our body politic. He argues that imprisonment, originally conceived as a response to the crim...

In sheer numbers, no form of government control comes close to the police stop. Each year, twelve percent of drivers in the United States are stopped by the police, and the figure is almost double among racial minorities. Police stops are among the most recognizable and frequently criticized incidences of racial profiling, but, while numerous studies have shown that minorities are pulled over at higher rates, none have examined how police stops have come to be both encouraged and instituti...

As crime rates inexorably rose during the tumultuous years of the 1970s, disputes over how to handle the violence sweeping the nation quickly escalated. James Q. Wilson redefined the public debate by offering a brilliant and provocative new argument-that criminal activity is largely rational and shaped by the rewards and penalties it offers-and forever changed the way Americans think about crime. Now with a new foreword by the prominent scholar and best-selling author Charles Murray, this ...

This classic has been the most authoritative text in the field since 1924. The thoroughly revised Eleventh Edition continues to provide a sound, sophisticated, sociological treatment of the principal issues in criminology.

Winner of the 2014 Division of Women and Crime Distinguished Scholar Award presented by the American Society of CriminologyFinalist for the 2013 C. Wright Mills Book Award presented by the Society for the Study of Social ProblemsCompelling interviews uncover why tough drug policies disproportionately impact women in the American prison systemSince the 1980s, when the War on Drugs kicked into high gear and prison pop...

Rarely a week goes by when juvenile delinquency or the Young Offenders Act are not discussed in the dominant media. Are we witnessing a moral panic over youth crime or a spate of “child-blaming” driven by the politics of law and order? Sangster traces the history of young women and crime and in so doing punctures dozens of myths surrounding these issues. Girl Trouble uncovers the voices of girls and their families who are caught up in the juvenile justice system, and provides a cr...