The World of Crime: Breaking the Silence on Problems of Security, Justice, and Development Across the World

"This book is important for students who want to put domestic crime and justice issues and criminological theories in an international perspective....It is more than likely that this book will also interest all those who are professionally or privately interested in issues of crime, corruption, terrorism, law enforcement, criminal justice and sustainable development."

―Johnson Thomas, BUSINESS INDIA



In today′s interdependent world, governments must become more transparent about their crime and justice problems. The World of Crime: Breaking the Silence on Problems of Security, Justice and Development Across the World seeks to break the "conspiracy of silence" regarding statistical information on these sensitive issues. It subsequently analyzes the macro causes of crime such as rapid urbanization, economic inequality, gender discrimination, abuse of alcohol, and drugs and availability of guns. Furthermore, the book analyzes the impact of crime on individuals and societies. Using a wealth of statistical information, the author underlines the need of greater international efforts to tackle transnational problems of crime.

Key Features

• Presents 13 chapters, which are organized in 4 main parts, that cover measurement challenges, common crimes, emerging global crimes, criminal justice, and international perspectives on crime and justice
• Contains statistical data taken from 2005 International Crime Victim Surveys
• Includes high quality figures such as scatter plots, graphs, and maps
• Features summary reviews and figure footnotes at the ends of each chapter

Intended Audience: The book is intended as a supplementary text for introduction to criminology, criminal justice, and comparative justice courses and is also appropriate for those professionally interested in security, criminal justice and development.

Jan Van Dijk has a degree in law and a PhD in criminology. He is a former policy director at the Dutch Ministry of Justice, professor in criminology at Leiden University and officer in charge of the crime prevention program of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna. He currently holds the Pieter van Vollenhoven Chair in Victimology and Human Security at the International Victimology Institute Tilburg (INTERVICT), The Netherlands. He is a member of the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) of the Council of Europe. In 1987 he initiated the International Crime Victims Survey. He supervised the ICVS′s five subsequent rounds of implementation, covering over 80 countries in all world regions. He acts as consultant of Eurostat in the design of the European Safety Survey, to be conducted in all EU member states in 2013. He has over the years published extensively on crime statistics, the prevention of crime and victim assistance in books and peer reviewed journals as well as in literary magazines and the popular press. One his latest books is a monography on international statistics on crime and criminal justice The World of Crime (Sage, 2007). He is a past president of the World Society of Victimology and member of the American and European Societies of Criminology. In 2012 he was awarded the Stockholm Prize in Criminology for his continued leadership in the conduct of the International Crime Victims Survey over a period of 25 years.