Discovery of hidden crime : self-report delinquency surveys in criminal policy context / Janne Kivivuori.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kivivuori, Janne.

Contributor:

Lipman Criminology Library Fund.

Series:

Clarendon studies in criminology

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Criminals--Research.

Criminals.

Crime--Research.

Crime.

Criminology.

Crime analysis.

Criminal statistics.

Social surveys.

Physical Description:

x, 204 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2011.

Summary:

"Discovery of Hidden Crime presents a history of the self-report crime survey as a method of criminological inquiry, describing how it was born within a distinct moral framework by pioneers out to show that crime was very prevalent and, therefore, normal. This books recounts how, during the 1930s and 1940s, a handful of US criminologists discovered the method of the self-report delinquency survey - a method used to ask people directly about their crimes. Previously, criminologists had to rely on official statistics produced by the police and other control authorities; their studies were therefore constrained by the 'official control barrier', which perpetuated the notion that crime was linked to the lowest social strata and/or to psychological abnormality. By confronting the domination of psychiatrists and psychologists in the study of crime, criminologists began to challenge the punitive attitudes of society; thus, exposing the so-called white collar offenders and alerting people to see crime as something that could also be found among the middle and upper classes. Expounding both the history of that discovery and its implications for criminological work, past and present, this book offers a fascinating perspective on how criminology has developed, and how it continues to advance amid the twin pressures of facts and policy goals." -- Publisher's information.

Contents:

1. Introduction

A tool and an idea

Confessing society

Myopic Panopticon

Satire in science

2. Key Concepts

Context of discovery and justification

Rhetorical redescription

The concept of normalization

Interpretive frames constrained but not determined by data

Neutralization theory: Offenders as innovating ideologists

Public criminology

Area and period focus

3. Contours of the Battlefield

The abnormality paradigm

The normality paradigm

4. Discovery of Hidden Crime

The view from within: Moral statistics and the official control barrier

Per scientiam ad justitiam

The white-collar offender as a prototype of the hidden criminal

The immediate foreground

Sophia Moses Robison

Sutherland experiments in the 1930s

Harnessing confession: Austin Larimore Porterfield

The law-abiding law-breaker

Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study

Normalization of sex: The Kinsey Report

The Americanization of the hidden crime survey in the 1950s

5. He Who is Without Sin Among You Let Him Cast the First Stone: Deployment of Hidden Crime Studies in the Nordic Area

Twelve-year hunt for the dark number

Normality of crime as a policy frame

Anomalous findings

Additional sources of the normality frame

Later developments in hidden crime data interpretation

Effects of the hidden crime survey

6. Concluding Discussion

Internal logic: The diffusion of the survey method to new topics

Preconditions of survey penetration

From abnormality to flexible normalization

Sociological bid for disciplinary hegemony

The populist soil

Can self-report surveys increase crime?

The changing political uses of crime survey

The expanding circle.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Lipman Criminology Library Fund.

ISBN:

9780199639199

0199639191

OCLC:

746618811

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description