This book explores new directions in contemporary theorising about the impact of social and cultural dynamics on crime and social control.

*Provides a clear, yet panoramic analysis of how the concept of social control has been used by different theoretical traditions in the social sciences. *Connects contemporary changes in areas such as policing, penal systems and surveillance, with wider and deeper changes in the constitution of society. *Employs empirical examples to illustrate key conceptual points. *Develops an innovative argument about the nature and scope of social control in late-modern societies. Understanding Social Control investigates how the concept of social control has been used to capture the ways in which individuals, communities and societies respond to a variety of forms of deviant behaviour. In so doing, the book demonstrates how an appreciation of the meanings of the concept of social control is vital to understanding the dynamics and trajectories of social order in contemporary late-modern societies. Through an analysis of a range of different modes of social control including: policing, imprisonment, surveillance, risk management, audit and architecture, this book explores how and why the mechanisms and processes of social control are changing. The book will be of interest to those studying courses in criminology and the social sciences, researchers with interests in the sociology of deviance and social control, and readers who want to understand the social forces that are shaping the world they live in.

The past 30 years have seen vast changes in our attitudes toward crime. More and more of us live in gated communities; prison populations have skyrocketed; and issues such as racial profiling, community policing, and "zero-tolerance" policies dominate the headlines. How is it that our response to crime and our sense of criminal justice has come to be so dramatically reconfigured? David Garland charts the changes in crime and criminal justice in America and Britain over the past twenty-five years, showing how they have been shaped by two underlying social forces: the distinctive social organization of late modernity and the neoconservative politics that came to dominate the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1980s. Garland explains how the new policies of crime and punishment, welfare and security—and the changing class, race, and gender relations that underpin them—are linked to the fundamental problems of governing contemporary societies, as states, corporations, and private citizens grapple with a volatile economy and a culture that combines expanded personal freedom with relaxed social controls. It is the risky, unfixed character of modern life that underlies our accelerating concern with control and crime control in particular. It is not just crime that has changed; society has changed as well, and this transformation has reshaped criminological thought, public policy, and the cultural meaning of crime and criminals. David Garland's The Culture of Control offers a brilliant guide to this process and its still-reverberating consequences.

James J. Chriss carefully guides readers through the debates about social control. The book provides a comprehensive guide to historical debates and more recent controversies, examining in detail the criminal justice system, medicine, everyday life and national security.

In Making Trouble leading scholars in criminology, sociology, criminal justice, women's studies, and social history explore the mediated cultural dynamics that construct images and understanding of crime, deviance, and control. Contributors examine the intertwined practices of the mass media, criminal justice agencies, political power holders, and criminal and deviant subcultures in producing and consuming contested representations of legality and illegality. While the collection provides broad analysis of contemporary topics, it also weaves this analysis around a set of innovative and unifying themes. These include the emergence of ""situated media"" within and between the various subcultures of crime, deviance, and control; the evolution of policing and social control as complex webs of mediated and symbolic meaning; the role of power, identity, and indifference in framing contemporary crime controversies, with special attention paid to the gendered construction of crime, deviance and control; and the importance of historical and cross-cultural dynamics in shaping understandings of crime, deviance, and control.

Are crime rates rising or falling around the world? Are specific types of crime more prevalent in some cultures than others? Do different cultures vary greatly in their attitudes toward crime prevention? Students will find answers to these and similar questions in this unique resource of 15 case studies exploring the problems of crime and crime control in different countries, ranging from Germany to Ghana, to around the world. Cross-cultural comparisons examine the history, the public perceptions, contemporary problems, and the future of crime and crime control in each country. The comparisons also provide readers with the opportunity to discover both the many differences and the many similarities that exist among the different cultures in their rates of crime, forms of prevention, and attitudes toward it. Each of the 15 chapters opens with a brief overview, which includes the type of government and the living environment of the country to introduce readers to the population. The countries were chosen to represent every region of the world and to provide as broad a picture as possible when exploring the issues presented by the problem of crime and different cultures' efforts to control it. The user-friendly format of the volume, with each chapter following the same outline, makes it easy for readers to compare specific aspects among the 15 cultures. These different views of the crime problem around the world and what it means to different people will help students to understand it in a broad sense as a social issue that affects all of humanity.

Integration of disciplines, theories and research orientations has assumed a central role in criminological discourse yet it remains difficult to identify any concrete discoveries or significant breakthroughs for which integration has been responsible. Concentrating on three key concepts: context, mechanisms, and development, this volume aims to advance integrated scientific knowledge on crime causation by bringing together different scholarly approaches. Through an analysis of the roles of behavioural contexts and individual differences in crime causation, The Explanation of Crime seeks to provide a unified and focused approach to the integration of knowledge. Chapter topics range from individual genetics to family environments and from ecological behaviour settings to the macro-level context of communities and social systems. This is a comprehensive treatment of the problem of crime causation that will appeal to graduate students and researchers in criminology and be of great interest to policy-makers and practitioners in crime policy and prevention.

Hughes presents a comprehensive overview of current and historical debates about crime prevention in particular and social control more generally. This innovative text focuses on and examines the managerialization of crime in recent decades.

This edited collection explores policing in America in regards to minority groups. The essays discuss how the relationship between police and minority groups affects politics, the economy, and minority groups’ daily lives and success. The contributors explore the Black Lives Matter movement, the Detroit, Los Angeles, and Atlanta Police Departments, immigration, incarceration, community policing, police violence, and detail causes, theories, and solutions to this important phenomenon.

The 1990s witnessed a flurry of legislative initiatives—most notably, “Megan’s Law”—designed to control a population of sex offenders (child abusers) widely reviled as sick, evil, and incurable. In Sex Offenders, Stigma, and Social Control, Diana Rickard provides the reader with an in-depth view of six such men, exploring how they manage to cope with their highly stigmatized role as social outcasts. The six men discussed in the book are typical convicted sex offenders—neither serial pedophiles nor individuals convicted of the type of brutal act that looms large in public perceptions about sex crimes. Sex Offenders, Stigma, and Social Control explores how these individuals, who have been cast as social pariahs, construct their sense of self. How does being labeled in this way and controlled by measures such as Megan’s Law affect one’s identity and sense of social being? Unlike traditional criminological and psychological studies of this population, this book frames their experiences in concepts of both deviance and identity, asking how men so highly stigmatized cope with the most extreme form of social marginality. Placing their stories within the context of the current culture of mass incarceration and zero-tolerance, Rickard provides a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between public policy and lived experience, as well as an understanding of the social challenges faced by this population, whose re-integration into society is far from simple or assured. Sex Offenders, Stigma, and Social Control makes a significant contribution to our understanding of sex offenders, offering a unique window into how individuals make meaning out of their experiences and present a viable—not monstrous—social self to themselves and others.