Putting Crime in its Place

Putting Crime in its Place
Author: David Weisburd
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2008-10-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0387096876

Putting Crime in its Place: Units of Analysis in Geographic Criminology focuses on the units of analysis used in geographic criminology. While crime and place studies have been a part of criminology from the early 19th century, growing interest in crime places over the last two decades demands critical reflection on the units of analysis that should form the focus of geographic analysis of crime. Should the focus be on very small units such as street addresses or street segments, or on larger aggregates such as census tracts or communities? Academic researchers, as well as practical crime analysts, are confronted routinely with the dilemma of deciding what the unit of analysis should be when reporting on trends in crime, when identifying crime hot spots or when mapping crime in cities. In place-based crime prevention, the choice of the level of aggregation plays a particularly critical role. This peer reviewed collection of essays aims to contribute to crime and place studies by making explicit the problems involved in choosing units of analysis in geographic criminology. Written by renowned experts in the field, the chapters in this book address basic academic questions, and also provide real-life examples and applications of how they are resolved in cutting-edge research. Crime analysts in police and law enforcement agencies as well as academic researchers studying the spatial distributions of crime and victimization will learn from the discussions and tools presented.

Fixing Broken Windows

Fixing Broken Windows
Author: George L. Kelling
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1997
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0684837382

Cites successful examples of community-based policing.

Last Chance in Texas

Last Chance in Texas
Author: John Hubner
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2008-04-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1588361632

A powerful, bracing and deeply spiritual look at intensely, troubled youth, Last Chance in Texas gives a stirring account of the way one remarkable prison rehabilitates its inmates. While reporting on the juvenile court system, journalist John Hubner kept hearing about a facility in Texas that ran the most aggressive–and one of the most successful–treatment programs for violent young offenders in America. How was it possible, he wondered, that a state like Texas, famed for its hardcore attitude toward crime and punishment, could be leading the way in the rehabilitation of violent and troubled youth? Now Hubner shares the surprising answers he found over months of unprecedented access to the Giddings State School, home to “the worst of the worst”: four hundred teenage lawbreakers convicted of crimes ranging from aggravated assault to murder. Hubner follows two of these youths–a boy and a girl–through harrowing group therapy sessions in which they, along with their fellow inmates, recount their crimes and the abuse they suffered as children. The key moment comes when the young offenders reenact these soul-shattering moments with other group members in cathartic outpourings of suffering and anger that lead, incredibly, to genuine remorse and the beginnings of true empathy . . . the first steps on the long road to redemption. Cutting through the political platitudes surrounding the controversial issue of juvenile justice, Hubner lays bare the complex ties between abuse and violence. By turns wrenching and uplifting, Last Chance in Texas tells a profoundly moving story about the children who grow up to inflict on others the violence that they themselves have suffered. It is a story of horror and heartbreak, yet ultimately full of hope.

Criminology and Public Policy

Criminology and Public Policy
Author: Hugh Barlow
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2010-01-25
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1439900086

Examines the links between criminological theory and criminal justice policy and practice.

The Criminology of Place

The Criminology of Place
Author: David Weisburd
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2012-10-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0199709106

The study of crime has focused primarily on why particular people commit crime or why specific communities have higher crime levels than others. In The Criminology of Place, David Weisburd, Elizabeth Groff, and Sue-Ming Yang present a new and different way of looking at the crime problem by examining why specific streets in a city have specific crime trends over time. Based on a 16-year longitudinal study of crime in Seattle, Washington, the book focuses our attention on small units of geographic analysis-micro communities, defined as street segments. Half of all Seattle crime each year occurs on just 5-6 percent of the city's street segments, yet these crime hot spots are not concentrated in a single neighborhood and street by street variability is significant. Weisburd, Groff, and Yang set out to explain why. The Criminology of Place shows how much essential information about crime is inevitably lost when we focus on larger units like neighborhoods or communities. Reorienting the study of crime by focusing on small units of geography, the authors identify a large group of possible crime risk and protective factors for street segments and an array of interventions that could be implemented to address them. The Criminology of Place is a groundbreaking book that radically alters traditional thinking about the crime problem and what we should do about it.

The Science of Crime Measurement

The Science of Crime Measurement
Author: Martin A. Andresen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2014-01-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1135006261

Crime statistics are ubiquitous in modern society – but how accurate are they? This book investigates the science of crime measurement focussing on four main questions: how do we count crime? How do we calculate crime rates? Are there other measurements of crime? What are the issues surrounding crime statistics? All too often we take the measurement of crime at face value when there is, in fact, a science behind it. This book specifically deals with issues related to spatially-referenced crime data that are used to analyse crime patterns across the urban environment. The first section of the book considers alternative crime rate calculations. The second section of the book contains a thorough discussion of a measure of crime specialisation. Finally, the third section of the book addresses a number of aggregation issues that are present with such data: crime type aggregations, temporal aggregations of crime data, the stability of crime patterns over time, and the importance of spatial scale. This book builds on a growing body of literature on the science of crime measurement and offers a comprehensive account of this growing subfield of criminology. The book speaks to wider debates in the fields of crime analysis, environmental criminology and crime prevention and will be perfect reading for advanced level undergraduate and graduate students looking to find out more about the measurement of crime.

Law and Order

Law and Order
Author: Robert Reiner
Publisher: Polity
Total Pages: 521
Release: 2007-09-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0745629962

Written with the honest and concerned citizen in mind, this book offers up-to-date analysis of contemporary trends in crime and violence and the attempts to control these in the Western World.

Place Matters

Place Matters
Author: David Weisburd
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2016-04-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1316483150

Over the last two decades, there has been increased interest in the distribution of crime and other antisocial behavior at lower levels of geography. The focus on micro geography and its contribution to the understanding and prevention of crime has been called the 'criminology of place'. It pushes scholars to examine small geographic areas within cities, often as small as addresses or street segments, for their contribution to crime. Here, the authors describe what is known about crime and place, providing the most up-to-date and comprehensive review available. Place Matters shows that the study of criminology of place should be a central focus of criminology in the twenty-first century. It creates a tremendous opportunity for advancing our understanding of crime, and for addressing it. The book brings together eighteen top scholars in criminology and place to provide comprehensive research expanding across different themes.

Handbook of Quantitative Criminology

Handbook of Quantitative Criminology
Author: Alex R. Piquero
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 787
Release: 2009-12-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0387776508

Quantitative criminology has certainly come a long way since I was ?rst introduced to a largely qualitative criminology some 40 years ago, when I was recruited to lead a task force on science and technology for the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. At that time, criminology was a very limited activity, depending almost exclusively on the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) initiated by the FBI in 1929 for measurement of crime based on victim reports to the police and on police arrests. A ty- cal mode of analysis was simple bivariate correlation. Marvin Wolfgang and colleagues were makingan importantadvancebytrackinglongitudinaldata onarrestsin Philadelphia,an in- vation that was widely appreciated. And the ?eld was very small: I remember attending my ?rst meeting of the American Society of Criminology in about 1968 in an anteroom at New York University; there were about 25–30 people in attendance, mostly sociologists with a few lawyers thrown in. That Society today has over 3,000 members, mostly now drawn from criminology which has established its own clear identity, but augmented by a wide variety of disciplines that include statisticians, economists, demographers, and even a few engineers. This Handbook provides a remarkable testimony to the growth of that ?eld. Following the maxim that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t understand it,” we have seen the early dissatisfaction with the UCR replaced by a wide variety of new approaches to measuring crime victimization and offending.

The Encyclopedia of Research Methods in Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2 Volume Set

The Encyclopedia of Research Methods in Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2 Volume Set
Author: J. C. Barnes
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 967
Release: 2021-09-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1119110726

The Encyclopedia of RESEARCH METHODS IN CRIMINOLOGY & CRIMINAL JUSTICE The most comprehensive reference work on research designs and methods in criminology and criminal justice This Encyclopedia of Research Methods in Criminology and Criminal Justice offers a comprehensive survey of research methodologies and statistical techniques that are popular in criminology and criminal justice systems across the globe. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners in the field, it offers a clear insight into the techniques that are currently in use to answer the pressing questions in criminology and criminal justice. The Encyclopedia contains essential information from a diverse pool of authors about research designs grounded in both qualitative and quantitative approaches. It includes information on popular datasets and leading resources of government statistics. In addition, the contributors cover a wide range of topics such as: the most current research on the link between guns and crime, rational choice theory, and the use of technology like geospatial mapping as a crime reduction tool. This invaluable reference work: Offers a comprehensive survey of international research designs, methods, and statistical techniques Includes contributions from leading figures in the field Contains data on criminology and criminal justice from Cambridge to Chicago Presents information on capital punishment, domestic violence, crime science, and much more Helps us to better understand, explain, and prevent crime Written for undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers, The Encyclopedia of Research Methods in Criminology and Criminal Justice is the first reference work of its kind to offer a comprehensive review of this important topic.