What Is Crime?: Controversies over the Nature of Crime and What to Do about It

by Stuart Henry and Mark M. Lanier

Mortimer J Adler, Kathyrn Ann Farr, Marc Gertz, Don C. Gibbons, Leroy C. Gould, Scott Greer, John Hagan, Gary Kleck, Jerome Michael, Dragan Milovanovic, Charles Otto, Katheryn K. Russell, Paul Schnorr, Herman Schwendinger, Julia Schwendinger, Dennis C. Sullivan, Ray Surette, Paul W. Tappan, and Larry L. Tifft

For decades, scholars have disagreed about what kinds of behavior count as crime. Is it simply a violation of the criminal law? Is it behavior that causes serious harm? Is the seriousness affected by how many people are harmed and does it make a difference who those people are? Are crimes less criminal if the victims are black, lower class, or foreigners? When corporations victimize workers is that a crime? What about when governments violate basic human rights of their citizens, and who then polices governments? In What Is Crime? the first book-length treatment of the topic, contributors debate the content of crime from diverse perspectives: consensus/moral, cultural/relative, conflict/power, anarchist/critical, feminist, racial/ethnic, postmodernist, and integrational. Henry and Lanier synthesize these perspectives and explore what each means for crime control policy.

• ISBN10: 0847698076
• ISBN13: 9780847698073
• Publish Date: 7 February 2001 (first published 1 January 2001)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Rowman & Littlefield
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 272
• Language: English