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Key Ideas in Criminology and Criminal Justice is an innovative, fascinating treatment of some of the seminal theories in criminology and key policies in criminal justice, offering a detailed and nuanced picture of these core ideas. With a fluid, accessible, and lively writing style, this brief text is organized around major theories, ideas, and movements that mark a turning point in the field, and concludes with a discussion of the future of criminology and criminal justice. Readers will learn about the most salient criminological and criminal justice research and understand its influence on t

The movement to privatize correctional institutions has gained considerable momentum as the need to reduce the costs of incarceration to public agencies has become more critical. The empirical evidence regarding whether private prisons are more cost-effective and whether they provide a higher quality of confinement to inmates, however, is inconclusive. To help clarify this portion of the prison privatization debate, this article contains a systematic review of the evaluation literature comparing the costs and quality of confinement of public versus private prisons. In doing so, three issues are highlighted: (a) the conclusions that can be reached based on the existing literature,(b) the major methodological inconsistencies that have hindered researchers' ability to draw firm conclusions from the body of empirical studies thus far, and (c) the direction that future research in this area may take to advance a better understanding of the potential advantages and disadvantages of prison privatization.

"Revitalizing Victimization Theory: Revisions, Applications, and New Directions revises some of the major perspectives in victimization theory, applies theoretical perspectives to the victimization of vulnerable populations, and carves out new theoretical territory that is clearly needed but has yet to be developed. With the exception of a handful of isolated works in the mid-twentieth century, theory and research on victimization did not come into its own until the late 1970s with the articulation of lifestyle and routine activity theories. Research conducted within this tradition continues to be an important part of the overall criminological enterprise, and a large body of empirical knowledge has been generated. Nevertheless, theoretical advances in the study of victimization have largely stalled within the field of criminology. Indeed, little in the way of new theoretical headway has been made in well over a decade. This as an ideal time to revitalize victimization theory, and this volume does just that. It is an ambitious project that will hopefully reignite the kinds of theoretical discussions that once held the attention of the field. The work included here will shape the future of victimization theory and research in years to come. This volume should be of interest to a wide range of criminologists and have the potential to be used in graduate seminars and upper-level undergraduate courses"--

"Revitalizing Victimization Theory: Revisions, Applications, and New Directions revises some of the major perspectives in victimization theory, applies theoretical perspectives to the victimization of vulnerable populations, and carves out new theoretical territory that is clearly needed but has yet to be developed. With the exception of a handful of isolated works in the mid-twentieth century, theory and research on victimization did not come into its own until the late 1970s with the articulation of lifestyle and routine activity theories. Research conducted within this tradition continues to be an important part of the overall criminological enterprise, and a large body of empirical knowledge has been generated. Nevertheless, theoretical advances in the study of victimization have largely stalled within the field of criminology. Indeed, little in the way of new theoretical headway has been made in well over a decade. This as an ideal time to revitalize victimization theory, and this volume does just that. It is an ambitious project that will hopefully reignite the kinds of theoretical discussions that once held the attention of the field. The work included here will shape the future of victimization theory and research in years to come. This volume should be of interest to a wide range of criminologists and have the potential to be used in graduate seminars and upper-level undergraduate courses"--

Social support, institutional anomie, and macrolevel general strain perspectives have emerged as potentially important explanations of aggregate levels of crime. Drawing on insights from each of these perspectives in a cross‐national context, the analyses show that 1) our measure of social support is inversely related to homicide rates, 2) economic inequality also maintains a direct relationship with homicide rates, and 3) social support significantly interacts with economic inequality to influence homicide rates. The implications of the analysis for ongoing discourse concerning the integration of these criminological theories and the implications for the development of effective crime control policies are discussed.

To determine the empirical status of Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) "general theory of crime," we conducted a meta‐analysis on existing empirical studies. The results indicate that, regardless of measurement differences, low self‐control is an important predictor of crime and of "analogous behaviors." Also, low self‐control has general effects across different types of samples. Contrary to Gottfredson and Hirschi's position, however, the effect of low self‐control is weaker in longitudinal studies, and variables from social learning theory still receive support in studies that include a measure of low self‐control. Finally, we argue that meta‐analysis is an underutilized tool in discerning the relative empirical merits of criminological theories.

Privatization in the correctional setting takes many forms. This article focuses on an extreme variant of correctional privatization—privately owned and operated facilities—and critically examines the philosophical argument used to legitimate the practice. Among the more problematic features identified include a reliance on an interpretation of liberal theory that muddles the distinction between rights and authority, and confusion regarding the libertarian conceptions of the ultraminimal and minimal state. As a result, the attempt to justify the delegation of coercive authority from the state to private agencies is questioned. The authors attempt to advance ongoing debate by discussing one method for identifying what privatization alternatives are consistent with liberal theory's conceptions of the individual and the state's authority to punish.

While policy makers have long extolled the benefits of incarceration, criminologists have expended considerable effort demonstrating the harmful collateral consequences of incarceration. Sampson (2011) recently challenged researchers to move beyond this dichotomy and to assess the "social ledger" of incarceration, where both the potential benefits and harms associated with incarceration are examined. To shed light on the variation in the collateral consequences of incarceration, we focus on the experiences of a valuable group of individuals directly impacted by imprisonment: those caring for children of incarcerated parents. Drawing from in‐depth interviews with a diverse group of caregivers (N= 100), we examine the various consequences (both positive and negative) that occur in their lives as a result of incarceration, as well as the causal processes responsible for the outcomes we observe. Our findings reveal marked variation in the effects of incarceration on caregivers. Such effects are shaped by (1) the prisoner's prior parental involvement, (2) the interpersonal relationship between caregiver and prisoner, and (3) the caregiver's family support system. These findings have important implications for future work conducted on the collateral consequences of incarceration for caregivers, children, and families.

Recent research has used both routine activity/lifestyle frameworks and self‐control theory to explain victimization. Thus far, combined tests of these theories have focused on offending populations and street crime victimization. Whether these frameworks also explain exposure to and likelihood of nonviolent victimization (e.g., fraud) in general‐population samples remains an open empirical question. Building on prior work, we assess the independent effects of routine consumer activities (i.e., remote purchasing) and low self‐control on the likelihood of fraud targeting and victimization. Using a representative sample of 922 adults from a statewide survey in Florida, the results confirm our expectation that remote‐purchasing activities increase consumers' risk of being targeted for fraud. Low self‐control has no effect on whether consumers are targeted, but it does significantly increase the likelihood of fraud victimization.