Contemporary Issues In The Empirical Study Of Crime

In today's globalized society, an international exchange of ideas and views is indispensable within the field of social sciences, including criminology and criminal justice studies. The research group Governance of Security (GofS) fosters contemporary international discourses on issues of crime and crime control. In 2008, GofS started a research paper series, combining theoretical and empirical articles on issues reflecting the research activities of GofS. This research group is a collaboration between Ghent University and Ghent University College in Belgium. GofS concentrates its research around the study of administrative and judicial policy that have been developed with respect to new issues of crime and insecurity. The GofS series - Governance of Security Research Papers (GofS) - is published by Maklu Publishing (Belgium). Contemporary Issues in the Empirical Study of Crime - Volume 1 of GofS's series Governance of Security Research Papers - includes the following: Drugs and Crime: Are They Hand in Glove? A Review of Literature * The Study of Public Expenditure on Drugs: A Useful Evaluation Tool for Policy * Corporations as a Blind Spot in Research: Explanations for a Criminological Tunnel Vision * The Nominal Group Technique: A Participative Research Technique Holding Great Potential for Criminology * Analytical Criminology: A Style of Theorizing and Analyzing the Micro-Macro Context of Acts of Crime * The Geography of Social Cohesion and Crime at the Municipality Level * Disentangling Neighbourhood and School Contextual Variation in Serious Offending: Assessing the Effect of Ecological Disadvantage * Itinerant Crime Groups: Mobility Attributed to Anchor Points? * Patterns of Drug Use Before, During and After Detention: A Review of Epidemiological Literature.

In today's globalized society, an international exchange of ideas and views is indispensable within the field of social sciences, including criminology and criminal justice studies. The research group Governance of Security (GofS) fosters contemporary international discourses on issues of crime and crime control. In 2008, GofS started a research paper series, combining theoretical and empirical articles on issues reflecting the research activities of GofS. This research group is a collaboration between Ghent University and Ghent University College in Belgium. GofS concentrates its research around the study of administrative and judicial policy that have been developed with respect to new issues of crime and insecurity. The GofS series - Governance of Security Research Papers (GofS) - is published by Maklu Publishing (Belgium). Readings on Criminal Justice, Criminal Law and Policing - Volume 2 of GofS's series Governance of Security Research Papers - includes the following: Punishment across Borders: The Rationales behind International Execution of Sentences . Interpreting the Concept of 'Discretionary Power' within the Execution of Sentences: A Comparison between the Belgian and French Situation . Esperanto for EU Crime Statistics: Towards Common European Offense Definitions in an EU-level Offense Classification System . Developing a Framework for the Legal Rights of Victims and Witnesses . What Can European Institutions and the International Criminal Court Learn from Each Other? . Purpose Limitation in EU-US Data Exchange in Criminal Matters: The Remains of the Day . Some Criminal Law Reflections on the Sexual Transmission of HIV . Reading about Crime in Post-Intervention Societies: A Critical Assessment . Policing and Leadership: The Case of the Belgian Chiefs of the Local Police . Reflections on the Possible Integration of Intelligence-Led Policing into Community Policing: The Belgian Case . Reliability and Correlational Validity of Police Interview Competences: Assessing the Stability of the Police Interview Competency Inventory . The Role of Europol in Joint Investigation Teams: A Foretaste of an Executive European Police Office? . Checking Aspects of a "Nodal Orientation" for Policing the Port of Antwerp.

Changes over time in the levels and patterns of crime have significant consequences that affect not only the criminal justice system but also other critical policy sectors. Yet compared with such areas as health status, housing, and employment, the nation lacks timely information and comprehensive research on crime trends. Descriptive information and explanatory research on crime trends across the nation that are not only accurate, but also timely, are pressing needs in the nation's crime-control efforts. In April 2007, the National Research Council held a two-day workshop to address key substantive and methodological issues underlying the study of crime trends and to lay the groundwork for a proposed multiyear NRC panel study of these issues. Six papers were commissioned from leading researchers and discussed at the workshop by experts in sociology, criminology, law, economics, and statistics. The authors revised their papers based on the discussants' comments, and the papers were then reviewed again externally. The six final workshop papers are the basis of this volume, which represents some of the most serious thinking and research on crime trends currently available.

In response to misconceptions and sub-optimal assessment of situational interaction in the criminological literature, this volume is a comprehensive resource for researchers of person-environment interaction in human behavioural outcomes, with a focus on acts of crime. It provides a bridge between strong complex theory about causal situational interaction in crime and the appropriate methods for empirically testing proposed situational mechanisms. It is underwritten by the principle that research should be driven by theory and served by method. This volume clarifies the key concepts of interaction and situation within the framework of Situational Action Theory (SAT). It details the implications of these conceptual issues for an appropriate integrative analytical approach to data collection and analysis that places situational interaction at the heart of research into the causes of behaviour (such as acts of crime). Using existing examples of attempts to analyse person-environment interaction, the volume distinguishes and showcases different methods and evaluates their appropriateness for the study of situational interaction in behaviour. Appropriate for researchers in criminology and the behavioural sciences more generally, Studying Situational Interaction is essential for those studying the individual and environmental causes of human actions such as crime.

The study of how the environment, local geography, and physical locations influence crime has a long history that stretches across many research traditions. These include the neighborhood effects approach developed in the 1920s, the criminology of place, and a newer approach that attends to the perception of crime in communities. Aided by new technologies and improved data-reporting in recent decades, research in environmental criminology has developed rapidly within each of these approaches. Yet research in the subfield remains fragmented and competing theories are rarely examined together. The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Criminology takes a unique approach and synthesizes the contributions of existing methods to better integrate the subfield as a whole. Gerben J.N. Bruinsma and Shane D. Johnson have assembled a cast of top scholars to provide an in-depth source for understanding how and why physical setting can influence the emergence of crime, affect the environment, and impact individual or group behavior. The contributors address how changes in the environment, global connectivity, and technology provide more criminal opportunities and new ways of committing old crimes. They also explore how crimes committed in countries with distinct cultural practices like China and West Africa might lead to different spatial patterns of crime. This is a state-of-the-art compendium on environmental criminology that reflects the diverse research and theory developed across the western world.

Eminent scientists from various European countries--including Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, and Sweden--explain and evaluate the use of self-reported crime surveys in this comparative review. As one of the most prominent ways to measure and study specific types of crime and deviance, self-reported crime surveys are carried out and put to use in a variety of ways across European countries. Contributors to this examination include Marcelo F. Aebi, Lina Andersson, Cécile Carra, Giada Anna Maria Cartocchi, Thomas Görgen, Janne Kivivuori, Susan McVie, Lieven Pauwels, Stefaan Pleysier, Susann Rabold, Philippe Robert, Giovanni Battista Traverso, and Simona Traverso.

In nowadays' globalised society an international exchange of ideas and views is indispensable within the field of social sciences, including criminology and criminal justice studies.

This volume provides new empirical data, theories, and analyses on social conflicts, citizens, and policing. The book contains articles that focus on specific manifestations of socially and/or legally criminalized conflicts which may appear as radicalized. Some articles discuss the new actors that are involved in governance of security in order to support the conventional actors, referring specifically to citizens and private companies. Also, the book presents the results of perception studies on trust, punitiveness, and electronic monitoring at home. The scientific research includes students and convicts enhancing a critical reflection on governance of security. (Series: Governance of Security (GofS) Research Paper - Vol. 6)