Crime and Everyday Life: Insights and Implications for Society (Pine Forge Press Social Science Library)

Provocatively written and thoroughly researched, Crime and Everyday Life is the perfect supplementary text for your introductory criminology or criminal justice courses. While traditional texts focus on the factors causing individuals to commit crime, Crime and Everyday Life provides an insightful analysis of the "other side" of crime causation, examining how society encourages or inhibits crime in the routine activities of everyday life. History, social insight, and criminological analysis are woven together to present an interdisciplinary, and unconventional view of America's crime problem. Encouraging students to develop their own critical stance on society, crime, and criminal justice, the author challenges the conventional "wisdom" of crime control by showing how, often, simple and inexpensive changes in the physical environment and patterns of everyday activity can produce substantial decreases in crime rates, while expensive and time-consuming offender-based approaches fail time and again.