Despite ethnography's long and distinguished history in the social sciences, its use in criminology is still relatively rare. Over the years, however, ethnographers in the United States and abroad have amassed an impressive body of work on core criminological topics and groups, including gang members, sex workers, drug dealers, and drug users. Ethnographies on criminal justice institutions have also flourished, with studies on police, courts, and prisons providing deep insights into how these organizations operate and shape the lives of people who encounter them. The Oxford Handbook of Ethnographies of Crime and Criminal Justice provides critical and current reviews of key research topics, issues, and debates that crime ethnographers have been grappling with for over a century. This volume brings together an outstanding group of ethnographers to discuss various research traditions, the ethical and pragmatic challenges associated with conducting crime-related fieldwork, relevant policy recommendations for practitioners in the field, and areas of future research for crime ethnographers. In addition to exhaustive overview essays, the handbook also presents case studies that serve as exemplars for how ethnographic inquiry can contribute to our understanding of crime and criminal justice-related topics.

Despite ethnography's long and distinguished history in the social sciences, its use in criminology is still relatively rare. Over the years, however, ethnographers in the United States and abroad have amassed an impressive body of work on core criminological topics and groups, including gang members, sex workers, drug dealers, and drug users. Ethnographies on criminal justice institutions have also flourished, with studies on police, courts, and prisons providing deep insights into how these organizations operate and shape the lives of people who encounter them. The Oxford Handbook of Ethnographies of Crime and Criminal Justice provides critical and current reviews of key research topics, issues, and debates that crime ethnographers have been grappling with for over a century. This volume brings together an outstanding group of ethnographers to discuss various research traditions, the ethical and pragmatic challenges associated with conducting crime-related fieldwork, relevant policy recommendations for practitioners in the field, and areas of future research for crime ethnographers. In addition to exhaustive overview essays, the handbook also presents case studies that serve as exemplars for how ethnographic inquiry can contribute to our understanding of crime and criminal justice-related topics.

Explores the role of stories in criminal culture and justice systems around the world Stories are much more than a means of communication—stories help us shape our identities, make sense of the world, and mobilize others to action. In Narrative Criminology, prominent scholars from across the academy and around the world examine stories that animate offending. From an examination of how criminals understand certain types of crime to be less moral than others, to how violent offenders and drug users each come to understand or resist their identity as ‘criminals’, to how cultural narratives motivate genocidal action, the case studies in this book cover a wide array of crimes and justice systems throughout the world. The contributors uncover the narratives at the center of their essays through qualitative interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and written archives, and they scrutinize narrative structure and meaning by analyzing genres, plots, metaphors, and other components of storytelling. In doing so, they reveal the cognitive, ideological, and institutional mechanisms by which narratives promote harmful action. Finally, they consider how offenders’ narratives are linked to and emerge from those of conventional society or specific subcultures. Each chapter reveals important insights and elements for the development of a framework of narrative criminology as an important approach for understanding crime and criminal justice. An unprecedented and landmark collection, Narrative Criminology opens the door for an exciting new field of study on the role of stories in motivating and legitimizing harm.

"The Oxford Handbook of Gangs and Society is the premier reference book on gangs for practitioners, policymakers, students, and scholars. This carefully curated volume contains 43 chapters written by the leading experts in the field, who advance a central theme of "looking back, moving forward" by providing state-of-the-art reviews of the literature they created, shaped, and (re)defined. This international, interdisciplinary collective of authors provides readers with a rare tour of the field in its entirety, expertly navigating thorny debates and the at-times contentious history of gang research, while simultaneously synthesizing flourishing areas of study that advance the field into the 21st century. The volume is divided into six cohesive sections that reflect the diverse field of gang studies and capture the large-scale cultural, economic, political, and social changes occurring within the world of gangs in the last century; anticipating immense changes on the horizon. From definitions to history to theory to epistemology to technology to policy and practice, this unprecedented volume captures the most timely and important topics in the field. When readers finish this book, they will be more confident in what we know and do not know about gangs in our society"--

"This volume brings together the work of leading international scholars across criminology, sociology, political science, and law - along with contributions from reform-minded practitioners - to examine a variety of issues in prosecutorial performance and the institutional structures that frame their behavior. The power of the modern prosecutor arises from several features of the criminal justice landscape: widespread use of law and order political rhetoric; legislatures' embrace of extreme sentencing ranges to respond to voter concerns; and the uncertain or limited accountability of prosecutors to other units of government, the electorate, the bar, or other political and professional constituencies. The convergence of these trends has transformed prosecution into an indispensable field of study. The Handbook connects the dots among existing theoretical and empirical research related to prosecutors. Major sections of the volume cover (1) prosecutor performance during distinct phases of a criminal case, (2) the features of the prosecutor's environment, both inside the office and external to the office, that influence the choices of individual prosecutors and office leaders, and (3) prosecutorial priorities when dealing with specialized types of crimes, victims, and defendants. Taken together, the chapters in this volume identify the founding texts, discuss leading theoretical and methodological approaches, explain the scope of unresolved issues, and preview where this field is headed. The volume provides a bottom-up view of an important new scholarly field. It offers an indispensable starting point for newcomers and a compelling synthesis for specialists and practitioners"--

This handbook explores organized crime, which it divides into two main concepts and types: the first is a set of stable organizations illegal per se or whose members systematically engage in crime, and the second is a set of serious criminal activities that are typically carried out for monetary gain.

This handbook presents a series of essays that captures not the past of criminology, but where theoretical explanation is headed. The volume is replete with ideas, discussions of substantive topics with salient theoretical implications, and reviews of literatures that illuminate avenues along which theory and research evolve.

This book provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary examination of courtroom ethnography. This collection gathers international researchers from a multitude of disciplines to explore three central themes: doing courtroom ethnography, ethnographic studies of the courtroom, and contemporary and critical aspects of courtroom ethnography. It highlights the nuances, negotiations, and issues that ethnographic researchers face in the courtroom. It covers topics like how to study legal actors and lay participants, legal and social processes, norms and rulings, digitalisation and vulnerability, gender and inequalities, and more across a range of legal cases. It presents the current state of the art of the field of courthouse ethnography with a discussion of methodological challenges, modes of access and best practice examples. With practical tips/questions at the end of each chapter, it speaks to students and above in subjects including sociology, criminology, law, geography, sociology of law, conflict studies, socio-legal studies and beyond.

Gun Present takes us inside the everyday operations of the law at a courthouse in the Deep South. Illuminating the challenges accompanying the prosecution of criminal cases involving guns, the three coauthors—an anthropologist, a geographer, and a district attorney—present a deeply human portrait of prosecutors’ work. Built on an immersive, community-based participatory partnership between researchers and criminal justice professionals, Gun Present chronicles how a justice assemblage comprising institutional structures and practices, relationships and roles, and individual moral and emotional worlds informs the day-to-day administration of justice. Weaving together in-depth interviews, quantitative analysis of more than a thousand criminal cases, analysis of trial transcripts, and over a year of ethnographic observations, Gun Present provides a model for scholar-practitioner collaborations.

The approach of the year 2000 has made the study of apocalyptic movements trendy. But groups anticipating the end of the world will continue to predict Armageddon even after the calendar clicks to triple Os.