Psychology Of Crime & Criminology

This course introduces students to criminol- ogy and criminal justice. It begins with an examination of the nature of crime, and the ways in which it is defined and explained in contemporary society. A major emphasis of the course is exploring the dimensions of crime, particularly the relationship between crime and social class (corporation and white collar crime), the links between youth and crime and youth and the criminal justice re- sponse, the relationship between gender and crime, and the reasons for the huge over-rep- resentation of indigenous people in all parts of the criminal justice system in Australia. The course also surveys the ways in which crime and criminal behavior are "explained" via a review of the contemporary literature in criminology theory. This book represents the systematic application of contemporary psy- chology to the study of crime.