Social Dynamics of Crime and Control

This book assembles essays by leading scholars in their fields of criminology and socio-legal studies. John Braithwaite, John Hagan, Jack Katz, Nicola Lacey, Michael Levi, Joan McCord, Dario Melossi, Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld explore new directions in contemporary theorising about the impact of social and cultural dynamics on crime and social control. These essays have in common that they transcend disciplinary boundaries by combining criminological and socio-legal perspectives; in so doing they bring fresh perspectives to the analysis of crime in market societies and in the global market place. The authors do not share the apocalyptic and dramatic predictions of rising crime rates, but are aware of the "double movement" of social change and the counteracting forces that emerge in its course. These essays promote an integrative perspective that bridges the gap between etiological criminology and a constructionist approach as well as between explanatory and normative theory.

Susanne Karstedt is Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University, Australia.

Rosemary Hunter FacSS is Professor of Socio-Legal Studies and Founding Head of Law at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University, UK. She is a feminist socio-legal scholar with particular interests in family law and family justice processes, judging and the judiciary, and access to justice. She has published widely on these topics in both Australia (where she began her academic career) and the UK. With Anne Barlow, she was a member of the ESRC-funded Mapping Paths to Family Justice project, which resulted in their prize-winning book, Mapping Paths to Family Justice: Resolving Family Disputes in Neoliberal Times (Barlow, Hunter, Smithson and Ewing, 2017). Rosemary has been the Academic Member of the Family Justice Council since 2016 and leads the Council's Domestic Abuse Working Group. She is also a member of the Private Law Working Group and the Ministry of Justice's Expert Panel on Harm in the Family Courts. She is a former Chair of the SLSA and a former Council member of JUSTICE.

Kai.-D. Bussmann is Professor of Penal Law and Criminology at the Martin-Luther-University in Halle-Wittenberg,Germany.

David Nelken is Professor of Comparative and Transnational Law and past Vice-Dean for Research at King's College London, UK. Widely published in sociology of law and in criminology, he has received awards from the American Sociological Association, the American Society of Criminology, the International Sociological Association, and the (USA) Law and Society Association. He has twice been a Trustee of the LSA and Vice-President of the RSCL.