BiblioVault - Books about Criminal statistics

Crime and Justice, Volume 43

Why Crime Rates Fall, and Why They Don't

Edited by Michael Tonry

University of Chicago Press Journals, 2015

Violent and property crime rates in all Western countries have been falling since the early and mid-1990s, after rising in the 1970s and 1980s. Few people have noticed the common patterns and fewer have attempted to understand or explain them. Yet the implications are essential for thinking about crime control and criminal justice policy more broadly. Crime rates in Canada and the United States, for example, have moved in parallel for 40 years, but Canada has neither increased its imprisonment rate nor adopted harsher criminal justice policies. The implication is that something other than mass imprisonment, zero-tolerance policing, and “three-strikes” laws explains why crime rates in our time are falling. The essays in this 43rd volume of Crime and Justice explore the possibilities cross-nationally. They document the common rises and falls in crime and look at possible explanations, including changes in sensitivity to violence generally and intimate violence in particular, macro-level changes in self-control, and structural and economic developments in modern states.

The contributors to this volume include Marcelo Aebi, Andromachi Tseloni, Eric Baumer, Manuel Eisner, Graham Farrell, Janne Kivivuori, Tapio Lappi-Seppälä, Suzy McElrath, Richard Rosenfeld, Rossella Selmini, Nick Tilley, and Kevin T. Wolff.

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A Guide to Sources of Texas Criminal Justice Statistics

R. Scott Harnsberger

University of North Texas Press, 2011

Plea Bargaining

The Experiences of Prosecutors, Judges, and Defense Attorneys

Milton Heumann

University of Chicago Press, 1978

"That relatively few criminal cases in this country are resolved by full Perry Mason-style strials is fairly common knowledge. Most cases are settled by a guilty plea after some form of negotiation over the charge or sentence. But why? The standard explanation is case pressure: the enormous volume of criminal cases, to be processed with limited staff, time and resources. . . . But a large body of new empirical research now demands that we re-examine plea negotiation. Milton Heumann's book, Plea Bargaining, strongly and explicitly attacks the case-pressure argument and suggests an alternative explanation for plea bargaining based on the adaptation of attorneys and judges to the local criminal court. The book is a significant and welcome addition to the literature. Heumann's investigation of case pressure and plea negotiation demonstrates solid research and careful analysis."—Michigan Law Review

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Understanding Crime and Place

A Methods Handbook

Edited by Elizabeth R. Groff and Cory P. Haberman

Temple University Press, 2023

Place has become both a major field of criminological study as well as an important area for policy development. Capturing state of the art crime and place research methods and analysis, Understanding Crime and Place is a comprehensive Handbook focused on the specific skills researchers need.

The editors and contributors are scholars who have been fundamental in introducing or developing a particular method for crime and place research. Understanding Crime and Place is organized around the scientific process, introducing major crime and place theories and concepts, discussions of data and data collection, core spatial data concepts, as well as statistical and computational techniques for analyzing spatial data and place-based evaluation. The lessons in the book are supplemented by additional instructions, examples, problems, and datasets available for download.

Conducting place-based research is an emerging field that requires a wide range of cutting-edge methods and analysis techniques that are only beginning to be widely taught in criminology. Understanding Crime and Place bridges that gap, formalizes the discipline, and promotes an even greater use of place-based research.

Contributors: Martin A. Andresen, Matthew P J Ashby, Eric Beauregard, Wim Bernasco, Daniel Birks, Hervé Borrion, Kate Bowers, Anthony A. Braga, Tom Brenneman, David Buil-Gil, Meagan Cahill, Stefano Caneppele, Julien Chopin, Jeffrey E. Clutter, Toby Davies, Hashem Dehghanniri, Jillian Shafer Desmond, Beidi Dong, John E. Eck, Miriam Esteve, Timothy C. Hart, Georgia Hassall, David N. Hatten, Julie Hibdon, James Hunter, Shane D. Johnson, Samuel Langton, YongJei Lee, Ned Levine, Brian Lockwood, Dominique Lord, Nick Malleson, Dennis Mares, David Mazeika, Lorraine Mazerolle, Asier Moneva, Andrew Newton, Bradley J. Oâ€™Guinn, Ajima Olaghere, Graham C. Ousey, Ken Pease, Eric L. Piza, Jerry Ratcliffe, Caterina G. Roman, Stijn Ruiter, Reka Solymosi, Evan T. Sorg, Wouter Steenbeek, Hannah Steinman, Ralph B. Taylor, Marie Skubak Tillyer, Lisa Tompson, Brandon Turchan, David Weisburd, Brandon C. Welsh, Clair White, Douglas J. Wiebe, Pamela Wilcox, David B. Wilson, Alese Wooditch, Kathryn Wuschke, Sue-Ming Yang, and the editors.

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