Criminology: A Sociological Introduction [Paperback]

`Criminology: A Sociological Introduction presents an outstanding reference point for those starting out in criminology or for those wishing to go back and clarify their understanding of various issues or theories. As an introduction to criminology from a sociological perspective this text is an effective, informative and accessible teaching aid... A more comprehensive introduction to the study of crime than most current examples.' - Ruth Penfold-Mounce, University of Leeds

'I have battled for years to divert students from criminology to sociology, feeling that crime is, in a sinister way, too 'attractive'. With a nicely-structured and well-written text such as this, I feel I am losing my battle.' - Vincenco Ruggiero, Middlesex University

This sociological introduction provides a much-needed textbook for an increasingly popular area of study. Written by a team of authors with a broad range of teaching and individual expertise, it covers almost every module offered in UK criminological courses and will be valuable to students of criminology worldwide. It covers:

• key traditions in criminology, their critical assessment and more recent developments
• new ways of thinking about crime and control, including crime and emotions, drugs and alcohol, from a public health perspective
• different dimensions of the problem of crime and misconduct, including crime and sexuality, crimes against the environment, crime and human rights and organizational deviance
• key debates in criminological theory
• the criminal justice system
• new areas such as the globalization of crime, and crime in cyberspace.

Specially designed to be user-friendly, each chapter contains boxed material on current controversies, key thinkers and examples of crime and criminal justice around the world with statistical tables, maps, summaries, critical thinking questions, annotated references and a glossary of key terms, as well as further reading sections and additional resource information as weblinks.

In early May 2000 a US Coast Guard cutter, the Sherman, chased a Russian-crewed, Korean-owned, Honduran-registered ship, the Arctic Wind, across the Alaskan seas. The Arctic Wind had been spotted fishing for salmon. A few years earlier, nobody would have taken much notice but now it was breaking the agreement of a 1991 UN General assembly resolution banning such fishing. The captain of the Sherman
ordered his crew to prepare to open fire at the Arctic and in the face of this, the ship was boarded for inspection. ‘In addition to finding a ton of salmon already in the vessel’s hold, the inspectors watched as some 14 kilometres of nets were pulled up that had collectively ensnared 700 salmon, 6 shark, 50 puffins, 12 albatross and a porpoise’ (French and Mastny, 2001: 166).
This is a very simple example of a ‘green crime’. The plundering of the earth’s resources has not until recently been thought of as a crime. Yet as is now well known,
the earth and its resources are being wasted and overexploited. Through this, numerous crimes, violations, deviations and irregularities are perpetrated against the
environment. These green crimes, then, may initially simply be defined as crimes against the environment (South, 1998a, b).
GLOBALISATION AND THE RISK SOCIETY
Environmental degradation is nothing new, but it was really only in the latter years of the twentieth century – as pollution accelerated – that global awareness of the
problems grew. It is now apparent that any understanding of the natural environment and its problems must also be global in scope. Regardless of divisions into nationstates,
the planet constitutes a single ecosystem, defined as the system composed of the interaction of all living organisms and their natural environment. This must mean that
responses to this global problem cannot be the task of one country alone; the problem is part of the process of globalisation that we have discussed throughout this book (see especially Chapter 6). We may also see this problem as part of what the German sociologist Ulrich Beck 1992) has called ‘the risk society’, whereby modern industrial societies create many new risks – largely manufactured through modern technologies – that were unknown in earlier
days. The new technologies are generating risks that are of a quite different order from those found throughout earlier human history. Of course, past societies were risky
and dangerous places too: whole populations could be wiped out by major earthquakes, floods or plagues, for example. But Beck argues that new kinds of risks appear with the industrial world that are not ‘in nature’ but ‘manufactured’. These are associated with the many new technologies which generate new dangers to lives and
to the planet itself. These dangers are humanly produced, may have massively unforeseen consequences, and may take many, many thousands of years to reverse. These

‘manufactured risks’ are taking us to the edge of catastrophe: to ‘threats to all forms of life on this planet’, to ‘the exponential growth of risks and the impossibility of escaping them’.
Risk is associated with a society that tries to break away from tradition and the past, and where change and the future become more valued. All these changes – from the railway to the computer, from genetic engineering to nuclear weapons – have consequences that we cannot easily predict. The emergence of ‘green crimes’ is part
of these new risks, bringing new patterns of crime which could not have been easily foretold a century or so ago.

BOX 17.1 A BRIEF HISTORY OF ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION
Pre-1500
Global extinctions of whole species – up to 90 per cent were
lost at the end of the Permian and Cretaceous periods; many
large mammals lost; some species through overhunting.
Microbe movements leading to epidemics; long-term natural
climate changes.
1500–1760
European ecological expansion and capitalist growth starts
to lead to rising resource shortage and land degradation;
demographic movements and ecological transformation of
the Americas.
Modern: 1760–1945
Capitalist industrialisation, urbanisation, concentration,
ecological expansion and colonialisation . . . local resource exhaustion, urban air, soil and water pollution, change in rural environments and forest loss, some global extinction of species and some contribution to global warning
Contemporary

Global warming, marine depletion, water in short supply,
deforestation, desertification, soil exhaustion, overspills,
hazardous waste, acid deposition, nuclear risks, decline
of the global ecosystem comes with Western growth and
consumption. Socialist industrialisation, industrialisation of the South, new risks from technology and warfare.
Sources: Harrison and Pearce (2000);
Held et al. (1999: 391) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.