The Routledge Handbook of European Criminology

Book excerpt: This new book brings together some of the leading criminologists across Europe, to showcase the best of European criminology. This Handbook aims to reflect the range and depth of current work in Europe, and to counterbalance the impact of the – sometimes insular and ethnocentric – Anglo-American criminological tradition. The end-product is a collection of twenty-eight chapters illustrating a truly comparative and interdisciplinary European criminology. The editors have assembled a cast of leading voices to reflect on differences and commonalities, elaborate on theoretically grounded comparisons and reflect on emerging themes in criminology in Europe. After the editors’ introduction, the book is organised in three parts: five chapters offering historical, theoretical and policy oriented overviews of European issues in crime and crime control; seven chapters looking at different dimensions of crime in Europe, includingcrime trends, state crime, gender and crime and urban safety; fifteen chapters examining the variety of institutional responses, exploring issues such as policing, juvenile justice, punishment, green crime and the role of the victim. This book gives some indication of the richness and scope of the emerging comparative European criminology and will be required reading for anyone who wants to understand trends in crime and its control across Europe. It will also be a valuable teaching resource, especially at postgraduate level, as well as an important reference point for researchers and scholars of criminology across Europe.