First published in 1999. This concludes work on a series Current Issues in Criminal Justice. Criminology. The book represents another milestone in a criminologist's journey to uncover some "truths" about the discipline and to reflectcritically on how that field has evolved. This journey, some of youmay remember, began in The Sociology of Criminological Theory:Paradigm or Fad and continued in The Demise of the CriminologicalImagination. To date, this latest work has already attracted considerabledebate and in the tradition of C. Wright Mills, engendered somewhatheated discussion about the philosophy of criminology and the logic ofits paradigms. What is perhaps most exciting about this work is that it is critical, in the true sense of critical, a term that has been abused and overused.

Critiques contemporary positivist-based criminology and proposes an alternative that is not in itself a new theory but a new orienting perspective, a different way of perceiving reality, under which existing theories can be used and reinterpreted. Because Williams proposes a metatheory rather than a unit theory, there are no specific empirical hypotheses to be made, but he strives to posit relationships with existing unit theories and ferret out some possible empirical points of examination. The volume concludes the Current Issues in Criminal Justice series.