Filled with real world examples derived from media reports on crime trends and other sources, this fully updated Second Edition analyzes the specific errors that can occur in the three most common methods used to report crime—official crime data, self report, and victimization studies. For each method, the authors examine strengths and weaknesses, the fundamental issues surrounding accuracy, and the method's application to theoretical and policy research. Throughout the book, the authors demonstrate the factors that underlie crime data and illustrate the fundamental links between theory, policy, and data measurement.

After a decade of steady decline, the appearance of conflicting reports regarding crime statistics has led many to call into question the accuracy of the current methods used to compile these statistics. Because the measurement of social phenomena involves human decisions, inevitably errors are made. This book aims to identify and examine the nature of these errors so that social scientists, legislators, and the general public will be able to conduct a healthy dialogue on the topic in order to remedy some of the problems. Before the book goes into much contemporary detail, historical measures of crime are given an overview. The authors then follow with chapters on the three most common methods used to report crime. Official data, self report, and victimization studies are analyzed in depth in order to discuss the specific errors that can occur in each type of measurement. The final chapter of the book describes ways that these measures can be applied to specific situations. The end result is the formation of a clearer picture of the impact these measures can have on the formation of crime prevention and control policies.

The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve. When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. And yet the idea of innate limits—of biology as destiny—dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to The Bell Curve, whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined by Stephen Jay Gould. In this edition Dr. Gould has written a substantial new introduction telling how and why he wrote the book and tracing the subsequent history of the controversy on innateness right through The Bell Curve. Further, he has added five essays on questions of The Bell Curve in particular and on race, racism, and biological determinism in general. These additions strengthen the book's claim to be, as Leo J. Kamin of Princeton University has said, "a major contribution toward deflating pseudo-biological 'explanations' of our present social woes."

This book addresses the measurement of crime both historically and cross-nationally. It examines the strengths and weaknesses of each data source, the fundamental issues surrounding their accuracy, and the applications of these data in theoretical and policy research.

Criminological Theory: The Essentials, Fourth Edition by Stephen G. Tibbetts and Alex R. Piquero is a brief yet comprehensive overview of the major concepts and perspectives of the key theories in the evolution of criminology. Putting criminological theory in context, the acclaimed authors examine policy implications brought about by theoretical perspectives to show students the practical application of theories to contemporary social problems. The new edition has been thoroughly updated with the latest theoretical extensions and empirical research, with links made to specific theories and recent events.

This 2005 book examines punishment in different forms, including corporal and economic punishment.

Providing an overview of the sociological approaches to law and criminal justice, this book focuses on how law and the criminal justice system inevitably affect one another, and the ways in which both are intimately connected with wider social forces.