After decades of rigorous study in the United States and across the Western world, a great deal is known about the early risk factors for offending. High impulsiveness, low attainment, criminal parents, parental conflict, and growing up in a deprived, high-crime neighborhood are among the most important factors. There is also a growing body of high quality scientific evidence on the effectiveness of early prevention programs designed to prevent children from embarking on a life of crime. Drawing on the latest evidence, Saving Children from a Life of Crime is the first book to assess the early causes of offending and what works best to prevent it. Preschool intellectual enrichment, child skills training, parent management training, and home visiting programs are among the most effective early prevention programs. Criminologists David Farrington and Brandon Welsh also outline a policy strategy--early prevention--that uses this current research knowledge and brings into sharper focus what America's national crime fighting priority ought to be. At a time when unacceptable crime levels in America, rising criminal justice costs, and a punitive crime policy have spurred a growing interest in the early prevention of delinquency, Farrington and Welsh here lay the groundwork for change with a comprehensive national prevention strategy to save children from a life of crime.

After decades of rigorous study in the United States and across the Western world, a great deal is known about the early risk factors for offending. High impulsiveness, low attainment, criminal parents, parental conflict, and growing up in a deprived, high-crime neighborhood are among the most important factors. There is also a growing body of high quality scientific evidence on the effectiveness of early prevention programs designed to prevent children from embarking on a life of crime. Drawing on the latest evidence, Saving Children from a Life of Crime is the first book to assess the early causes of offending and what works best to prevent it. Preschool intellectual enrichment, child skills training, parent management training, and home visiting programs are among the most effective early prevention programs. Criminologists David Farrington and Brandon Welsh also outline a policy strategy--early prevention--that uses this current research knowledge and brings into sharper focus what America's national crime fighting priority ought to be. At a time when unacceptable crime levels in America, rising criminal justice costs, and a punitive crime policy have spurred a growing interest in the early prevention of delinquency, Farrington and Welsh here lay the groundwork for change with a comprehensive national prevention strategy to save children from a life of crime.

Forensic psychology has developed and extended from an original, narrow focus on presenting evidence to the courts to a wider application across the whole span of civil and criminal justice, which includes dealing with suspects, offenders, victims, witnesses, defendants, litigants and justice professionals. This Handbook provides an encyclopedic-style source regarding the major concerns in forensic psychology. It is an invaluable reference text for practitioners within community, special hospital, secure unit, prison, probation and law enforcement forensic settings, as well as being appropriate for trainees and students in these areas. It will also serve as a companion text for lawyers and psychiatric and law enforcement professionals who wish to be apprised of forensic psychology coverage. Each entry provides a succinct outline of the topic, describes current thinking, identifies relevant consensual or contested aspects and alternative positions. Readers are presented with key issues and directed towards specialized sources for further reference.

"The text is an incredible composite of the literature that has shaped correctional practice. The authors have a great capacity for making research interesting and accessible. Cullen and Jonson have accomplished their goal of motivating readers to become sophisticated consumers of correctional knowledge." —Betsy Matthews, Eastern Kentucky University The Second Edition of Correctional Theory: Context and Consequences continues to identify and evaluate the major competing theories used to guide the goals, policies, and practices of the correctional system. Authors Francis T. Cullen and Cheryl Lero Jonson demonstrate that changes in theories can legitimize new ways of treating and punishing offenders, and they help readers understand how transformations in the social and political context of U.S. society impact correctional theory and policy. Designed to motivate readers to become sophisticated consumers of correctional information, the book emphasizes the importance of using evidence-based information to guide decisions, rather than relying on nonscientific commonsense or ideology-based beliefs.

For 40 years, this classic text has taken the issue of economic inequality seriously and asked: Why are our prisons filled with the poor? Why aren’t the tools of the criminal justice system being used to protect Americans from predatory business practices and to punish well-off people who cause widespread harm? This new edition continues to engage readers in important exercises of critical thinking: Why has the U.S. relied so heavily on tough crime policies despite evidence of their limited effectiveness, and how much of the decline in crime rates can be attributed to them? Why does the U.S. have such a high crime rate compared to other developed nations, and what could we do about it? Are the morally blameworthy harms of the rich and poor equally translated into criminal laws that protect the public from harms on the streets and harms from the suites? How much class bias is present in the criminal justice system—both when the rich and poor engage in the same act, and when the rich use their leadership of corporations to perpetrate mass victimization? The Rich Get Richer, the Poor Get Prison shows readers that much of what goes on in the criminal justice system violates citizens’ sense of basic fairness. It presents extensive evidence from mainstream data that the criminal justice system does not function in the way it says it does nor in the way that readers believe it should. The authors develop a theoretical perspective from which readers might understand these failures and evaluate them morally—and they do it in a short text written in plain language. Readers who are not convinced about the larger theoretical perspective will still have engaged in extensive critical thinking to identify their own taken-for-granted assumptions about crime and criminal justice, as well as uncover the effects of power on social practices. This engagement helps readers develop their own worldview. New to this edition: Presents recent data comparing the harms due to criminal activity with the harms of dangerous—but not criminal—corporate actions Updates research on class discrimination at every stage of the criminal justice system Updates statistics on crime, victimization, incarceration, and wealth Increased material for thinking critically about criminal justice and criminology New material on global warming and why Black Lives Matter protests did not cause increases in crime in 2020 Expanded discussion of marijuana and drug legalization Stronger chapter overviews, clearer chapter structure and expanded review questions Streamlined and condensed prose for greater clarity

This insightful volume integrates criminological theories, prevention science, and empirical findings to create an up-to-date survey of crime prevention research and strategies. Its interdisciplinary perspective expands on our knowledge of risk factors to isolate the malleable mechanisms that produce criminal outcomes, and can therefore be targeted for intervention. In addition, the text identifies developmental, lifespan, and social areas for effective intervention. Reviews of family-, community-, and criminal justice-based crime prevention approaches not only detail a wide gamut of successful techniques, but also provide evidence for why they succeed. And as an extra research dimension, the book’s chapters on methodological issues and challenges uncover rich possibilities for the next generation of crime prevention studies. Included in the coverage: Integrating criminology and prevention research Social disorganization theory: its history and relevance to crime prevention Research designs in crime and violence prevention Macro- and micro-approaches to crime prevention and intervention programs Implications of life course: approaches for prevention science Promising avenues for prevention, including confronting sexual victimization on college campuses Spotlighting current progress and continuing evolution of the field, Preventing Crime and Violence will enhance the work of researchers, practitioners, academicians, and policymakers in public health, prevention science, criminology, and criminal justice, as well as students interested in criminology and criminal justice.

Young Criminal Lives is the first cradle-to-grave study of the experiences of some of the thousands of delinquent, difficult and destitute children passing through the early English juvenile reformatory system. The book breaks new ground in crime research, speaking to pressing present-day concerns around child poverty and youth justice, and resonating with a powerful public fascination for family history. Using innovative digital methods to unlock the Victorian life course, the authors have reconstructed the lives, families and neighbourhoods of 500 children living within, or at the margins of, the early English juvenile reformatory system. Four hundred of them were sent to reformatory and industrial schools in the north west of England from courts around the UK over a fifty-year period from the 1860s onwards. Young Criminal Lives is based on one of the most comprehensive sets of official and personal data ever assembled for a historical study of this kind. For the first time, these children can be followed on their journey in and out of reform and then though their adulthood and old age. The book centres on institutions celebrated in this period for their pioneering new approaches to child welfare and others that were investigated for cruelty and scandal. Both were typical of the new kind of state-certified provision offered, from the 1850s on, to children who had committed criminal acts, or who were considered 'vulnerable' to predation, poverty and the 'inheritance' of criminal dispositions. The notion that interventions can and must be evaluated in order to determine 'what works' now dominates public policy. But how did Victorian and Edwardian policy-makers and practitioners deal with this question? By what criteria, and on the basis of what kinds of evidence, did they judge their own successes and failures? Young Criminal Lives ends with a critical review of the historical rise of evidence-based policy-making within criminal justice. It will appeal to scholars and students of crime and penal policy, criminologists, sociologists, and social policy researchers and practitioners in youth justice and child protection.