Radical Issues in Criminology

Book excerpt: This collection of essays deals with central issues relating to the rule of law, individual rights and the politics of penal reform. The issues examined include juvenile justice, criminal violence, feminism and criminology, civil liberties, police powers, justice in prisons and the necessity for social life to be regulated by law. The emphasis throughout is upon specific concrete problems and the formulation of possible solutions. In marked contrast to many radical criminologists, who have fashioned utopian visions of a socialist society untroubled by problems of social regulation, each contributor to this book focuses sharply upon tangible problems and workable alternatives. By eschewing global theories of either crime or law, and by avoiding generalized "radical" recipes for change, these essays provide an important counter-balance to recent libertarian, anarchistic and utopian trends in modern criminology.