The Problem of Crime

This second edition of The Problem of Crime offers a comprehensive analysis of some of the most important developments in the study of crime. The book considers how the criminological gaze has shifted its focus from a preoccupation with ′crimes of the streets′ to examining also the serious social harms and injuries associated with crime in the city, child abuse, domestic violence, organized crime, corporate crime, political violence, hate crime and crimes of the state. The book also emphasizes the necessity of studying the staging and representation of crime in the news media and popular culture. In doing so The Problem of Crime highlights the ways that criminologists are currently challenging and reformulating the concept of crime.

Drawing on a wide range of explanatory and illustrative material, the contributors interrogate the proposition that there are universally agreed conceptions of what constitutes the crime problem. A persistent and widespread public concern with crime suggests that everyone knows what it is. However, each chapter in this book shows that ′crime′ carries a range of meanings and understandings that are open to disputation, and which shift historically and culturally.

Ranging over a wide variety of issues, this fully revised and updated edition will be essential reading for students of criminology, criminal justice, socio-legal studies, social policy and sociology, and also for readers with a general interest in crime.

The Problem of Crime is a course text for the Open University course, Crime, Order and Social Control (D315).