What is crime? : controversies over the nature of crime and what to do about it / edited by Stuart Henry and Mark M. Lanier.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Henry, Stuart, 1949-

Lanier, Mark.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Crime.

Physical Description:

xiv, 258 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield, [2001]

Summary:

For decades, scholars have disagreed about what kinds of behavior count as crime. Is it simply a violation of the criminal law? Is it behavior that causes serious harm? Is the seriousness affected by how many people are harmed and does it make a difference who those people are? Are crimes less criminal if the victims are black, lower class or foreigners? When corporations victimize workers is that a crime? What about when governments violate basic human rights of their citizens, and who then polices governments? In What is Crime, the first book length treatment on the topic, contributors debate the content of crime from diverse pe rspectives: consensus/moral, cultural/relative, conflict/power, anarchist/critical, feminist, racial/ethnic, postmodernist and integrational. Henry and Lanier synthesize these perspectives and explore what each means for crime control policy.

Contents:

Crime in context: the scope of the problem / Mark M. Lanier and Stuart Henry

The nature of crime / Jerome Michael and Mortimer J. Adler

Who is the criminal? / Paul W. Tappan

Defining patterns of crime and types of offenders / Don C. Gibbons and Kathryn Ann Farr

Defenders of order or guardians of human rights? / Herman Schwendinger and Julia Schwendinger

Crime as social interaction / Leroy C. Gould, Gary Kleck, and Marc Gertz

Defining crime in a community setting: negotiation and legitimation of community claims / Paul Schnorr

The media's role in the definition of crime / Ray Surette and Charles Otto

Racing crime: definition and dilemmas / Katheryn K. Russell

Constitutive definiton of crime: power as harm / Dragan Milovanovic and Stuart Henry

A needs-based, social harms defintinon of crime / Larry L. Tifft and Dennis C. Sullivan

Crime as desrepute / Scott Greer and John Hagan

The prism of crime: toward an itegrated definition of crime / Stuart Henry and Mark M. Lanier.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0847698068

0847698076

OCLC:

44868958