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Back on Track: Asking and Answering the Right Questions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Austin T. Turk
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Extract

Despite the obvious and repeated failures of biopsycho-criminologies, looking at and inside individuals for the causes of crime persists as the politically more tolerable and economically more rewarding (for grantsmen) alternative to the kind of theoretical and empirical work featured in this symposium. Instead of looking for what is wrong with people, these researchers are looking for what is wrong with society—and why. Once again the causal importance of contextual factors and social forces is being investigated and demonstrated. To theorists who have perceived and posited causal linkages among structured inequalities, social conflicts, and the definition as well as the occurrence of crimes, such research deserves the highest priority. These are indeed welcome contributions because they are asking the right questions. Now let us consider the answers they offer.

Type
Symposium: Crime, Class, and Community—An Emerging Paradigm
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , 1993 , pp. 355 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by The Law and Society Association

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References

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