Big Data (Criminology at the Edge)

The internet has launched the world into an era into which enormous amounts of data are

generated every day through technologies with both positive and negative consequences.

This often refers to big data . This book explores big data in organisations operating in the

criminology and criminal justice fields.

Big data entails a major disruption in the ways we think about and do things, which

certainly applies to most organisations including those operating in the criminology and

criminal justice fields. Big data is currently disrupting processes in most organisations – how

different organisations collaborate with one another, how organisations develop products

or services, how organisations can identify, recruit, and evaluate talent, how organisations

can make better decisions based on empirical evidence rather than intuition, and how

organisations can quickly implement any transformation plan, to name a few.

All these processes are important to tap into, but two underlying processes are critical

to establish a foundation that will permit organisations to flourish and thrive in the era of

big data – creating a culture more receptive to big data and implementing a systematic data

analytics-driven process within the organisation.

Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars in

criminology, criminal justice, sociology, and cultural studies but also to government

agencies, corporate and non-corporate organisations, or virtually any other institution

impacted by big data.

Benoit Leclerc is an Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. His research interests include the development and application of procedural analysis (ie crime scripting) for purposes of crime investigation, detection and prevention. He is leading several research projects with Corrections and police organisations. With Clifford Shearing and Ross Homel, he is the cofounding editor of Criminology at the Edge, an annual edited volume series in criminology (Routledge). Recent publications appeared in Criminal Justice and Behavior, Crime & Delinquency, the Journal of Research in Crime, and Delinquency and Sexual Abuse.

Jesse Cale is an Associate Professor of Criminology in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University and Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales in Australia. His main areas of research involve the causes and consequences of sexual violence, developmental criminology and criminal justice policy and evaluation. He is a Chief Investigator on several large-scale research grants in Australia funded by the Australian Research Council and different state governments and agencies examining the development of delinquency and criminal offending and the effectiveness of criminal justice policy responses to crime.