Pathways and Crime Prevention

Book excerpt: Alan France and Ross Homel have been awarded the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology Allen Austin Bartholomew Award for 2007 for their paper:Societal access routes and developmental pathways: putting social structure and young people’s voice into the analysis of pathways into and out of crime This book has two goals: to contribute to a better understanding of pathways into and out of crime, and to improve prevention policies and approaches that involve intervention before crime and related problems emerge or become entrenched. Pathways and Crime Prevention explores new evidence from research on pathways using qualitative and ethnographic methods as well as quantitative approaches, and also draws on new work in the field of developmental prevention. It addresses a number of key problems, including:the theorisation of pathways, social context and human agency, the influence of poverty and social exclusion on pathways towards adulthood and towards crime, and the ways in which learnings from prevention research can be translated into effective policies and practice.Pathways and Crime Prevention argues that broadening the research questions and exploring contributions from a wide range of disciplines will greatly enhance our understanding of both pathways and the type of interventions that might work.The chapters in this book were presented originally at the Pathways and Prevention International Symposium held in Brisbane on 29 and 30 September 2005. Some of the papers have been reproduced with permission from Volume 39, No 3 (2006) of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology.