Crime, Punishment and Migration (Compact Criminology) - Tapa dura

With his characteristic flair and erudition, Dario Melossi elucidates the troubled – and troublesome – connections between migration, crime and punishment, exposing the myths that often pass as facts and showing how globalized market society shapes today’s anxieties about immigrant crime. This brief book is a masterly introduction to a profoundly important topic. 

This compelling volume is encyclopedic in its reach, theoretically rich, and masterfully argued. Through a sweeping overview of the intersection of criminal law, migration law, and economic forces, Melossi paints a broad canvas of the criminalization of immigrants, moving the analysis across multiple historical periods and contexts. The result is a tour de force that will recalibrate debates about immigration and crime.

Dario Melossi's Crime, Punishment and Migration is a must-read book for scholars, students and practitioners interested in the analysis of the relationship between penality and human mobility. Among many other critical contributions, the book provides a compelling theoretical framework to comparatively examine the punishment of migrants in different countries and continents, and it thoroughly traces the genealogical evolution of the criminological knowledge on the subject.

This book by the leading scholar Dario Melossi covers a particularly complicated issue in a relatively simple manner: the relationship between migrants and penalty. A very nice introduction to the particular place the study of migrant population has in criminology. Among its virtues are the insights of a comparative approach with a long historical reach. This reminds us that the processes that trouble us are often not as new as they seem, even when they take new shapes.

In the globalized world an extensive process of international migration has developed. The resulting conundrum of issues when examining crime and migration makes for a bitterly complex and intriguing set of debates.

In this compelling account, Dario Melossi provides an authoritative take on the theory and research examining the connection of crime, migration and punishment.  Through a socio-historical and criminological approach, he shows that the core questions of migrants' criminal behaviour are tightly related to the rules and practices of migrants’ reception within the various countries’ social and normative structures.

Written for students, academics, researchers and activists with an interest in the topic, the book will appeal to individuals in a range of disciplines, from criminology and sociology to politics, international relations, ethnic studies, geography, social policy and development.

Compact Criminology is an exciting series that invigorates and challenges the international field of criminology. 

Books in the series are short, authoritative, innovative assessments of emerging issues in criminology and criminal justice – offering critical, accessible introductions to important topics.  They take a global rather than a narrowly national approach.  Eminently readable and first-rate in quality, each book is written by a leading specialist.

Compact Criminology provides a new type of tool for teaching, learning and research, one that is flexible and light on its feet. The series addresses fundamental needs in the growing and increasingly differentiated field of criminology.