Criminology Research Council grant ; (2/74)
Australian students of criminology who wish to read an introductory text dealing with broad areas of criminology such as the causation of crime and the treatment of offenders have to choose from books written by American or English authors which have been prepared for students from the same country as the author. This book attempts to provide a similar coverage to the traditional textbooks but to use, wherever possible, examples based on Australian rather than overseas research in order to illustrate the various points made.
The book consists of three parts. The first eight chapters deal with the various types of explanation which criminologists have proposed as the major reasons for the occurrence of crime.
Chapters 9 to 14 deal with the problems of assessing how much crime is occurring in a given community and with an assessment of the position regarding violent crime, property crime, 'victimless' crime and traffic crime in Australia. Some consideration of the police and the problem of corruption within police forces is given in Chapter 14.
The remaining chapters deal with sentencing and punishment of detected offenders. Wherever possible the arguments are illustrated by reference to Australian examples. As well as dealing with the important topics in criminology in a way which should be found to be more relevant by Australian students, the results of important research reported up to the end of 1981 have been included. As most available textbooks have not been revised for some years this makes this book more up-to-date than other readily available references.