Science & international affairs
2 total works
In this pioneering analysis of the influence exerted by modernization and socioeconomic evolution on patterns of crime, criminologist Louise I. Shelley asserts, Society gets the type and level of criminality its conditions produce. Shelley investigates crime patterns in undeveloped capitalist countries, in developed capitalist countries, and in Socialist countries. Her study is unique in that she alone synthesizes historical accounts of crime and civil disorder with the literature of modern urban studies and contemporary criminality. Through her cross-cultural and historical approach she demonstrates that contrary to what seems apparent, the global profile of crime is not that of a maniacal pillaging monster. The monster is sane. Crime patterns are predictable. By analyzing the criminal population, recent crime trends, the impact of the criminal justice system, and the predominant values of society, Shelley makes informed predictions concerning the future state of criminality.Shelley addresses six issues. She considers ways in which modernization has affected rates of crime during the initial and later stages of a society s development. She asks how modernization affects the rates of occurrence of fundamental forms of crime. Another question is whether development changes the relationship between crimes against property and crimes of violence against people. Does the speed of the transition from undeveloped to developed society alter observable patterns of behavior? And finally, does modernization change the nature of the criminal population?In this book Shelley provides both historical and contemporary perspectives from which to view the impact of the developmental process on levels and forms of criminality. She synthesizes the large body of literature aimed at measuring the extent to which socioeconomic development produces similar changes in culturally distinct and geographically separated nations."
Truly global in perspective and unique in the field of criminology, this collection of essays from the scholars of many lands draws upon the talents of diverse disciplines as it seeks to form a basis for our understanding of crime in terms of the political, social, and economic forces that shape human behavior. Comparative criminology is the historical and cross-cultural study of crime and criminal justice, according to Louise I. Shelley. It analyzes the dynamics of criminality and the social response to criminality among different regions and cultures within one country and across countries and historical periods. It studies crime as a social phenomenon determined by the legal norms and customs of each society. Essays included in the first section of this anthology are American Women and Crime, Rita J. Simon; Affluence and Adolescent Crime, Jackson Toby; Youth Crime in Post-Industrial Societies, Paul C. Friday and Jerald Hage; A Comparative Study of Youth Culture and Delinquency in Upper-Middle-Class Canadian and Swiss Boys, Edmund W. Vaz and J. Casparis; and Homicide in 110 Nations: The Development of the Comparative Crime Data File, Dane Archer and Rosemary Gartner.Essays in the second part of the book are Contemporary Crime in Historical Perspective: A Comparative Study of London, Stockholm, and Sydney, T. R. Gurr; The Modernization of Crime in Germany and France, 18301913, Howard Zehr; Urbanization and Crime: The Soviet Case in Cross-Cultural Perspective, Louise I. Shelley; A Cross-Cultural Study of Correlates of Crime, Margaret K. Bacon, Irvin L. Child, and Herbert Barry III; The Case of August Sangret, Wolf Middendorf; Subcultures in Correctional Institutions in Poland and the United States, Maria Los and Palmer Anderson; and Crime and Delinquency Research in Selected European Countries, Eugene Doleshal."