Volume 1: The Meaning of Crime: Definition, representation and social construction

This volume introduces key issues in the definition of `crime', examining legal, historical, moral and social constructions of crime.

Volume 2: The Causes of Crime

Explanations of crime are various, diverse and contradictory. This volume brings together some of the major criminological paradigms (biological, psychological and sociological) which have attempted to locate the causes of crime.

Volume 3: Radical and Critical Criminologies

This volume introduces how radical, feminist and critical schools of criminology started to address the issue not of why offending occurred, but of how particular images of crime were constructed and maintained.

Collectively, the volumes provide ready access to the key debates about and disputes within the academic study of crime as they have emerged over the past 120 years.