How do societies define crime, and how should it be punished or prevented? Which is a more criminal act, causing a death by dumping toxic material or by shooting a victim with a gun? Are criminals born or made? Criminology: Explaining Crime and Its Context, Tenth Edition, offers a broad perspective on criminological theory. It provides students of criminology and sociology with a thorough exposure to a range of theories about crime, contrasting their logic and assumptions, but also highlighting efforts to integrate and blend these frameworks. In this tenth edition, the authors have incorporated new directions that have gained traction in the field, while remaining faithful to their criminological heritage. Among the themes in this work are the relativity of crime (its changing definition) with abundant examples, historical roots of criminology and the lessons they have provided, and the strength and challenges of applying the scientific method. This revision offers new coverage of the growing problem of mental health and crime, a more tightly focused discussion of crime statistics, more global examples, and new material on human trafficking and on youth violence. Brown and Esbensen improve on this engaging and challenging introduction to the theory of crime and punishment, which is already perhaps the best criminology text available for undergraduates today.

Presents the stories, musings, advice and conclusions of well-known criminologists about their research and their careers. Provides readers with suggestions about how to manage their professional lives. Contributors include Frank Cullen, Julius Debro, Don Gibbons, John Irwin, Mac Klein, Gary Marx, Joan McCord, Richard Quinney, Frank Scarpitti, Jim Short, Rita Simon, Charles Tuttle and Jackson Toby.

The chapters in this book have been written by teachers and scholars who have achieved a certain eminence in the field of criminology and criminal justice. Their names will be found heavily footnoted in textbooks and monographs. Articles and books that they have written will be discussed in classes. They have done well professionally, and that is why they were asked to reflect on their careers and to suggest pathways for others.

In 1662, Amy Denny and Rose Cullender were accused of witchcraft, and, in one of the most important of such cases in England, stood trial and were hanged in Lowestoft. A Trial of Witches is an in-depth study of this trial, and an analysis of the court procedures, and the larger social, cultural and political concerns of the period.
In a critique of the official process, the book details how the erroneous conclusions of the trial were achieved. The authors consider the participants in the case, their institutional importance (the presiding judge was Matthew Hale, whose work is still cited in English case law and the verifying doctor was the prominent Sir Thomas Browne), their part in the fate of the women and their future careers.
The Lowestoft trial was cited at the Salem trials against those who lost their lives there. Through detailed research of primary sources, the authors explore the important implications of this case for the understanding of hysteria, group mentality, social forces and the witchcraft phenomenon as a whole.

How do societies define crime, and how should it be punished or prevented? Which is a more criminal act, causing a death by dumping toxic material or by shooting a victim with a gun? Are criminals born or made? Criminology: Explaining Crime and Its Context, Tenth Edition, offers a broad perspective on criminological theory. It provides students of criminology and sociology with a thorough exposure to a range of theories about crime, contrasting their logic and assumptions, but also highlighting efforts to integrate and blend these frameworks. In this tenth edition, the authors have incorporated new directions that have gained traction in the field, while remaining faithful to their criminological heritage. Among the themes in this work are the relativity of crime (its changing definition) with abundant examples, historical roots of criminology and the lessons they have provided, and the strength and challenges of applying the scientific method. This revision offers new coverage of the growing problem of mental health and crime, a more tightly focused discussion of crime statistics, more global examples, and new material on human trafficking and on youth violence. Brown and Esbensen improve on this engaging and challenging introduction to the theory of crime and punishment, which is already perhaps the best criminology text available for undergraduates today.

This reference guide documents white-collar crimes by individuals and businesses over the past 150 years, offering the most comprehensive array of documents and interpretations available. From Gilded Age railroad scandals to the muckraking period and from the Savings and Loan debacle to corporate fallout during the recent economic meltdown, some individuals and companies have chosen to take the low road to achieve "the American dream." While these offenders throughout modern history may have lacked ethics, morals, or good judgment, they certainly were not wanting in terms of creativity. White-Collar and Corporate Crime: A Documentary and Reference Guide traces the fascinating history of white-collar and corporate criminal behavior from the 1800s through the 2010 passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform measure. Author Gilbert Geis scrutinizes more than a century of episodes involving corporate corruption and other self-serving behaviors that violate antitrust laws, bribery statutes, and fraud laws. The various attempts made by authorities to rein in greed and the methods employed by wrongdoers to evade these controls are also discussed and evaluated. Provides dozens of court documents, legislative hearing transcripts, muckraking articles, and accounts of crooked behavior in the upper echelons of power Contains numerous photographs that illustrate the subject material Includes a bibliography in each section that directs readers to supplementary sources

In compelling narrative, the authors probe the sensational cases of Nathan F. Leopold, Jr., and Richard A. Loeb, the Scottsboro "boys," Bruno Richard Hauptmann, Alger Hiss, and O.J. Simpson, highlighting significant lessons about criminal behavior and the administration of criminal justice.
Each case study details the crime, the police investigation, and the court proceedings, profiles the major players, and examines the outcome and aftermath of the trial. The authors untangle the perplexities surrounding the cases and illuminate the many mysteries that remain unsolved today. These celebrated trials reveal issues of overzealous prosecution, sloppy police work, judicial bias, race, class, and ethnic struggles, and the role of wealth in securing a competent defense. They also show how the temper of the times and frenzied media coverage heightened the intensity of drama in the cases.

With this collection of essays, Jack Kamerman presents the first sustained examination of one of the underpinnings of the operation of the criminal justice system: the issue of responsibility for actions and, as a consequence, the issue of accountability.

Unique in the breadth of its approach, this volume examines the issue of responsibility from the perspectives of criminal justice professionals, sociologists, philosophers, and public administrators from four countries. Attacking the problem on various levels, the essayists look first at the assumptions made by criminal justice institutions regarding offender responsibility, then turn to the views of offenders on the causes of their own actions and to the consequences of offenders either accepting or denying responsibility.

These scholars also examine the social and psychological circumstances under which people in general accept or deny responsibility for what they do, thus providing the basis for understanding the process of social distance as a major precondition for people to commit atrocities without seeing themselves as responsible. Understanding the circumstances under which people either distance themselves from or embrace responsibility enables criminologists to make grounded recommendations for reordering responsibility in the criminal justice system and, more generally, for restoring a sense of responsibility to organizations, occupations, and society.

The substantive vehicle for this analysis of accountability and responsibility is the relationship between criminal justice institutions and the offenders who are under institutional control.

Aside from Kamerman, the contributors are William C. Collins, Charles Fethe,Gilbert Geis, Robert J. Kelly, Alison Liebling, Jess Maghan, Mark Harrison Moore, Paul Neurath, John Rakis, William Rentzmann, and Jose E. Sanchez.

This text addresses the following two questions: "What kinds of problems can the law solve?" and "What kinds of problems does the law create?" Using these questions as starting points, Meier and Geis evenhandedly explore the role and function of law relating to six major issues that often divide Americans today: prostitution, drug use, homosexuality, abortion, pornography, and gambling. Statutes and public opinion have shifted dramatically over recent decades in regard to these behaviors. The book details these developments and offers explanations of why they have occurred. Some people view all or some of these behaviors as acts that ought to be permitted, as part of individual freedom. Others find one, some, or all of them to be genuine threats to the country's social and moral fiber and believe that they ought to be criminalized. Still others maintain that action ought to be taken to limit some of the behaviors, but that using the criminal justice system is not the best way to proceed. Meier and Geis' provocative book offers sophisticated, in-depth discussions of these issues, then reviews the conflicting opinions about the proper role of criminal law in dealing with them. It is written in straightforward, jargon-free language, providing an ideal background for exploring the facts and views regarding what are often contentious concerns. Criminal Justice and Moral Issues increases student understanding through the abundant use of relevant illustrations, examples, and case studies.

This expose of the US health care system uncovers the dark side of physician practice. Using interviews with doctors and federal, state and private officials, it reveals the practices of doctors who profit from abortions on women who are not pregnant, of needless surgery, overcharging for services and excessive testing. The authors trace patterns of abuse to the inauguration of the American Medicaid programme in the mid 1960s, when government authorities, not individual patients, were entrusted with responsibility for payments. Determining fees and regulating treatment also became the job of government agencies, thus limiting the doctors' traditional role. Physicians continue to disagree with Medicare and Medicaid policies that infringe on their autonomy and judgement. The medical profession has not accepted the gravity or extent of some members' illegal behaviour, and individual doctors continue to blame violations on subordinates and patients. In the meantime, programme guidelines have grown more confusing, blocking efforts to detect, apprehend and prosecute Medicaid defrauders. Failure to institute a coherent policy for fraud control in the medical benefit programme, the authors

In the nearly twenty years since the first edition of White-Collar Crime, the fields of criminal justice and criminology have changed dramatically. Nonetheless, the revised edition, published in 1977, still holds a place on many bookshelves, a testament to the editors' ability to identify works of the highest quality. At long last, with the assistance of new co-editor Lawrence M. Salinger, White-Collar Crime has been fully revised, including the most extensive bibliography on white-collar crime that has ever been compiled.