CRIME & SOC EXCLUSION (Broadening Perspectives in Social Policy)

"This collection provides a thoughtful and incisive commentary on key current developments relating to crime and social exclusion. This is strongly recommended reading for both practitioners and policy makers." Paul Cavadino, National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders "Seven professors plus seven other eminent academics provide a penetrating analysis of the causes and possible remedies for the social malaise which many of us consider is sharply worsening throughout the social spectrum in every continent." Noel G Hustlet, Southwark, Lewisham and Bromley Monthly Meeting "Crime and Social Exclusionis the first in a s series of books especially intended to stimulate fresh thinking by bringing a wide range of disciplines and approaches to bear on the social policy debate. It explores aspects of social exclusion and the measures taken to reduce its impact from the perspectives of criminology and social policy." Gordon Hughes, University of Wales, Cardiff "Crime and Social Exclusion is an excellent collection of essays which together provide a timeley introduction to important aspects of current debates about processes of social inclusion and exclusion, community and neighbourhood decline, youth crime and criminal justice systems, and the way that state politics and policies intervene in all this. It should be read widely in policy and academic circles and is likely to appear on some quite diverse student reading lists." Robert MacDonald, University of Teesside

Via a mutual concern with social exclusion, the agendas of criminology and social policy have begun to overlap far more in recent years. The two fields have always shared a common concern with class, and more recently with race and gender, but remained rigorously differentiated until crime prevention moved higher on political and academic agendas in the 1980s. This collection of papers explores aspects of social exclusion and the measures taken to reduce its impact from the perspective of both disciplines. The contributors write mainly, though not exclusively, from a British perspective, However the issues raised are of broader relevance to North America, Europe and elsewhere. Criminology in Britain has recently been examining the way in which political initiatives designed to contain and exclude dispossessed populations (seen to constitute major crime risks) have permeated all areas of criminal justice policy. In America this has led to an increased emphasis on the rhetoric of retribution, and the a managementa of criminal classes, shifting away from earlier emphasis on a rehabilitatinga individual offenders. Critics of this development increasingly recognise that more practical answers to crime involve not more penal repression but social policies designed to integrate and include the dispossessed, especially the young. It is in this connection that the experience of Singapore offers a different sort of warning.