The expanded edition of the handbook highlights current topics and interdisciplinary approaches
The Handbook of Criminal Sociology enters its second round. With updated content and new contributions, the book sets a new course in the academic debate on crime and social reactions. The editors Prof. Dr Dieter Hermann, Dr Barbara Horten and PD Dr Andreas Pöge explain the changes and expanded issues addressed in the new edition.
How have the focal points and issues of the sociology of crime changed since the first edition of the handbook and what new challenges and developments are addressed in the updated and expanded edition?
“The Handbook of the Sociology of Crime provides an overview of various facets of the sociology of crime. The second updated edition contains new features compared to the first edition. The editorial team has been expanded to include Dr Barbara Horten. The content of the handbook has been expanded to include new contributions: The subject area of social problems and social reactions has been expanded to include the contributions extremism, prejudice, discrimination and hate violence as well as sexual violence among peers. In the area of structure and development of crime, there is a new article on violence in schools, which deals with trend analyses and accompanying phenomena. In addition, the subject area of crime prevention has been newly included in the handbook with the articles on the deterrent effect of punishment, prevention through victim-offender mediation and community crime prevention.”
Given the interdisciplinary nature of the sociology of crime, what methods and approaches have been integrated into the handbook to enable a comprehensive and multi-layered analysis of crime in a social context?
“The Handbook of the Sociology of Crime is not designed as a textbook that covers the subject area exhaustively, but rather publishes reports by researchers on key topics in the sociology of crime. In each of these individual contributions, a systematic and comprehensive presentation of a subject area is provided. Each article also contains a presentation of the research and studies of the respective authors, whereby great importance is attached to a very good comprehensibility. In addition to authors from the fields of criminology, sociology and law, authors from the fields of empirical social research, psychology, political science, social work, social pedagogy, communication science and media research have been recruited for the handbook.”
To what extent does the handbook address the need to present complex research topics from the sociology of crime not only for experts, but also for a broader audience, and what strategies were used to make the content accessible?
“The sociology of crime lies at the interface between several scientific disciplines. It deals with a field in which the topic of crime in the context of society and the individual is addressed from different perspectives and using different methods. Current research from the core disciplines of criminology and sociology is often linked with issues from psychology, law, education, economics, theology and philosophy. This diversity has created a colourful research landscape that has not yet been comprehensively presented. This handbook aims to do this for selected subject areas. To this end, experts in each subject area systematically and comprehensively present their current research topics. Researchers with excellent expertise were selected to contribute to the handbook. A high level of specialist expertise is an essential prerequisite for being able to convey content in an understandable way. The mandate to also present their own research results has created an incentive to do this in a way that is understandable for a broad readership without compromising on scientific standards.”
