This sociological introduction provides a much-needed textbook for an increasingly popular area of study. Written by a team of authors with a broad range of teaching and individual expertise, it covers almost every module offered in UK criminological courses and will be valuable to students of criminology worldwide. It covers:

• key traditions in criminology, their critical assessment and more recent developments
• new ways of thinking about crime and control, including crime and emotions, drugs and alcohol, from a public health perspective
• different dimensions of the problem of crime and misconduct, including crime and sexuality, crimes against the environment, crime and human rights and organizational deviance
• key debates in criminological theory
• the criminal justice system
• new areas such as the globalization of crime, and crime in cyberspace.

Specially designed to be user-friendly, each chapter contains boxed material on current controversies, key thinkers and examples of crime and criminal justice around the world with statistical tables, maps, summaries, critical thinking questions, annotated references and a glossary of key terms, as well as further reading sections and additional resource information as weblinks.