Description
Book SynopsisExperiments in Criminology and Law: A Research Revolution illustrates how experimental methods, particularly laboratory experiments, can be useful for researchers studying crime, deviance, and law. Scholars in these areas have typically relied on data from surveys, ethnographies, and government records. While such research has produced evidence regarding correlations, it has not been as successful at increasing our understanding of the mechanisms responsible for those correlations. This book makes the case that laboratory experiments can help. Their strengths complement those of traditional methods and field experiments.
Trade ReviewExperiments in Law and Criminology cogently argues for the benefits of using laboratory experiments in testing, refining, and extending theories of deviance and social control. Moreover, this collection is useful as a primer on how, when, and why to use expirements, and argues that only coordination of multiple methods - of laboratory experiments with case studies, surveys, official archives, and field experiments - promises to accelerate growth of our understanding of law and criminology. Brilliantly conceived to exemplify what it advocates, Experimental Studies is an exciting mix of creative theory, ingenious experiment, and illuminating dialogue with and among noted theorists and researchers. -- Morris Zelditch, professor emeritus of sociology at Stanford University., and coeditor of New Directions in Contemporary Sociological Theory
This groundbreaking anthology of experimental law and criminology raises important issues for the development of criminology as an experimental science. With commentaries by well-know criminologists and legal scholars, including Travis Hirschi and Chris Uggen, Experiments in Criminology and Law: A Research Revolution is a highly useful and insightful text. -- Darrell Steffensmeier, professor of sociology and criminology at Penn State University, is coauthor of Confessions of a Dying Thief: Understanding Crim
Table of Contents1 Foreword 2 Why Experiment Now? Coordinating Research Methods to Accelerate Innovation in Law, Crime, and Deviance 3 Gottfredson and Hirschi in the Lab: An Experimental Test of the General Theory of Crime 4 Deterring Deviance: Rationality and Self-Control 5 Comment: Self-Control in the Lab 6 Norms and Neighborhoods: Explaining Variation in Informal Control 7 The Effects of Status and Peer Support on the Justification and Approval of Deviance 8 Comment: Social Influence in the Lab 9 Prosecutorial Misconduct in Serious Cases: Theory and Design of a Laboratory Experiment 10 Constructing Focal Points through Legal Expression: An Experimental Test 11 Comment: Exploring the LImits of Law 12 Whither Experiments in Crime, Deviance and Law? 13 Criminology as an Experimental Science 14 Thinking Experimental
