The Social Organization of Juvenile Justice recasts familiar sociological problems of research within a dramatically new and different theoretical and methodological perspective. In seeing law enforcement officers, no less than those accuse of criminal behavior, as locked into the creation of history, or more precisely, a series of retrospective and prospective interpretations of events both within and disengaged from, the social contexts relevant to what purportedly took place, Aaron Cicourel redefined the fault lines of contemporary criminology.The work makes imaginative use of a wide variety of new techniques of analysis from ethnomethodology to community studies—while at no point ignoring basic hard statistical data—in this study of juvenile justice in two California cities. Cicourel states the purpose of his book with clarity: The decision-making activities that produce the social problem called delinquency (and the socially organized procedures that provide for judicial outcomes) are important because they highlight fundamental processes of how social order is possible.This work challenges the conventional view that assumes delinquents are natural social types distributed in some ordered fashion, and produced by a set of abstract internal or external pressures from the social structure. Cicourel views the everyday organizational workings of the police, probation departments, courts, and schools, demonstrating how these agencies contribute to various kinds of transformations of the original events that led to law enforcement contact.This contextual creation of facts in turn leads to improvised, ad hoc interpretations of character structure, family life, and future prospects. In this way, the agencies may generate delinquency by their routine encounters with the young. His new introduction discusses with great detail the methodology behind his research and responses to earlier critiques of his work.

Each stage has also incorporated changes that were taking place in Quinney's personal life. Ultimately, there is no separation bewteen life and theory, between witnessing and writing."--BOOK JACKET.

Niklas Luhmann is recognised as a major social theorist, and his treatise on the sociology of law is a classic text. For Luhmann, law provides the framework of the state, lawyers are the main human resource for the state, and legal theory provides the most suitable base from which to theorize on the nature of society. He explores the concept of law in the light of a general theory of social systems, showing the important part law plays in resolving fundamental problems a society may face. He then goes on to discuss in detail how modern 'positive' – as opposed to ‘natural’ – law comes to fulfil this function. The work as a whole is not only a contribution to legal sociology, but a major work in social theory. With a revised translation, and a new introduction by Martin Albrow.

This highly acclaimed criminology text presents an up-to-date review of rational choice theories, including deterrence, shaming, and routine activities. It also incorporates current examples of deterrence research regarding domestic violence, drunk driving, and capital punishment, and features thought-provoking discussion of the relativity of crime. The authors explore the crime problem, its context, and causes of crime. The organization of the text reflects the fact that the etiology of crime must be at the heart of criminology. It examines contemporary efforts to redefine crime by focusing on family violence, hate crimes, white-collar misconduct with violent consequences, and other forms of human behavior often neglected by criminologists. Extensive discussion of evolving laws is included, and while the prevalence of the scientific method in the field of criminology is highlighted, the impact of ideology on explanations of crime is the cornerstone of the book.