Crime and punishment fascinate. Overwhelming in their media dominance, they present us with our most popular television programs, films, novels, art works, video games, podcasts, social media streams and hashtags. This work offers a foundational space for understanding the cultural life and imaginative force and power of crime and punishment. Across five areas foundational to the study of crime and media, leading scholars from five continents engage cutting edge scholarship in order to provide definitive overviews of over 120 topics.

This book explores the links between crime, deviance and popular culture in our highly-mediatised era, offering an insight into the cultural processes through which particular practices acquire a criminal or deviant status, and come to be seen as social problems. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, the edited collection brings together international scholars across various areas of specialisation to provide an up-to-date analysis of some important and topical issues in 21st-century popular culture. The chapters look at different aspects of popular culture, including fictional detective narratives and the true crime genre, popular media constructions of sexual deviance and Islamophobia, sports, graffiti and outlaw biker subcultures. The authors examine a wide range of relevant case studies through a number of crime and deviance-related theories. Crime, Deviance and Popular Culture will be of importance to scholars and students across several disciplines, including criminology, sociology of deviance, social anthropology, media studies, cultural studies, television studies and linguistics.

Anyone living or working in a city has feared or experienced street crime at one time or another; whether it be a mugging, purse snatching, or a more violent crime. In the U.S., street crime has recently hovered near historic lows; hence, the declaration of certain analysts that street life in America has never been safer. But is it really? Street crime has changed over past decades, especially with the advent of surveillance cameras in public places—the territory of the street criminal—but at the same time, criminals have found ways to adapt. This encyclopedic reference focuses primarily on urban lifestyle and its associated crimes, ranging from burglary to drug peddling to murder to new, more sophisticated forms of street crime and scams. This traditional A-to-Z reference has significant coverage of police and courts and other criminal justice sub-disciplines while also featuring thematic articles on the sociology of street crime. Features & Benefits: 175 signed entries within a single volume in print and electronic formats provide in-depth coverage to the topic of street crime in America. Cross-References and Suggestions for Further Readings guide readers to additional resources. Entries are supported by vivid photos and illustrations to better bring the material alive. A thematic Reader's Guide groups related entries by broad topic areas and, within the electronic version, combines with Cross-References and a detailed Index for convenient search-and-browse capabilities. A Chronology provides readers with a historical perspective of street crime in America. Appendices provide sources of data and statistics, annotated to highlight their relevance.

Contains contributions on the theme of popular culture, crime, and social control. This title includes chapters that tease out various criminologically relevant issues, pertaining to crime/deviance and/or the control thereof, on the basis of an analysis of various aspects and manifestations of popular culture, including music, and movies.

Popular Culture, Crime, And Justice closely examines how the criminal justice system is presented in the mass media from a variety of perspectives and, along the way, helps us to sort out our own thinking about the validity of this information.