Evolutionary Criminology Towards a Comprehensive Explanation of Crime
Auteurs : Durrant Russil, Ward Tony
In our attempts to understand crime, researchers typically focus on proximate factors such as the psychology of offenders, their developmental history, and the social structure in which they are embedded. While these factors are important, they don't tell the whole story. Evolutionary Criminology: Towards a Comprehensive Explanation of Crime explores how evolutionary biology adds to our understanding of why crime is committed, by whom, and our response to norm violations. This understanding is important both for a better understanding of what precipitates crime and to guide approaches for effectively managing criminal behavior.
This book is divided into three parts. Part I reviews evolutionary biology concepts important for understanding human behavior, including crime. Part II focuses on theoretical approaches to explaining crime, including the evolution of cooperation, and the evolutionary history and function of violent crime, drug use, property offending, and white collar crime. The developmental origins of criminal behavior are described to account for the increase in offending during adolescence and early adulthood as well as to explain why some offenders are more likely to desist than others. Proximal causes of crime are examined, as well as cultural and structural processes influencing crime. Part III considers human motivation to punish norm violators and what this means for the development of a criminal justice system. This section also considers how an evolutionary approach contributes to our understanding of crime prevention and reduction. The section closes with an evolutionary approach to understanding offender rehabilitation and reintegration.
1. Criminology and Evolutionary Theory
Part 1: The Evolutionary Framework
2. Evolutionary Theory and Human Evolution
3. Evolutionary Behavioral Science
4. Levels of Analysis and Explanations in Criminology
Part 2: Explaining Crime
5. The Evolution of Altruism, Cooperation, and Punishment
6. Distal Explanations: Adaptations and Phylogeny
7. Development
8. Proximate Explanations: Individuals, Situations, and Social Processes
9. Social Structural and Cultural Explanations
Part 3: Responding to Crime
10.Punishment, Public Policy, and Prevention
11.The Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Offenders
12.Looking Forward from the Perspective of the Past
Researchers, and graduate students in Forensic Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Forensic Science, and Criminology.
Tony Ward, PhD, DipClinPsyc, is currently professor in clinical psychology and director of clinical training at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He has taught clinical and forensic psychology at the universities of Melbourne, Canterbury, and Deakin and is a professorial fellow at the Universities of Birmingham, Kent, Melbourne, and Portsmouth. He has coauthored more than 370 academic publications, and his major research interests include desistance and reintegration processes in offenders, conceptualizations of risk and its management, cognition and evolutionary approaches to crime, and ethical issues in forensic and correctional psychology. He was given the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) 2003 significant achievement award for his research into offence pathways. Professor Ward is the developer of the Good Lives Model and has published numerous books, book chapters, and academic articles on this model since 2002. His recent book, Desistance from sex offending: Alternatives to throwing away the keys (2011, Guilford Press- coauthored with Richard Laws), presents an integration of the GLM with desistance theory and research. He is currently working on a book length project on evolution, agency, and sexual offending.
- Reviews how evolutionary findings improve our understanding of crime and punishment
- Examines motivations to offend, and to punish norm violators
- Articulates evolutionary explanations for adolescent crime increase
- Identifies how this knowledge can aid in crime prevention and reduction, and in offender rehabilitation
Date de parution : 03-2015
Ouvrage de 348 p.
15x22.8 cm
Thème d’Evolutionary Criminology :
Mots-clés :
Anthropology; Crime research; Criminal law; Criminology; Evolutionary theory; Evolutionary theory of crime; History of crime; Interdisciplinary approaches; Political science; Psychology; Sociology; Criminal behavior; Darwin; Divaricating plants; Homo floriensis; Homo sapiens; Human evolution; Inclusive fitness theory; Life-history theory; Moas; Origin of species; Parent-offspring conflict theory; Parental investment theory; Reciprocal altruism; Cultural evolution; Evolutionary behavioral science; Evolutionary psychology; Gene-culture coevolutionary theory; Human behavioral ecology; Niche construction; Integrative pluralism; Levels of organization; Proximate explanations; Tinbergen; Ultimate explanations; Altruism; Cooperation; Empathy; Moral psychology; Prosociality; Punishment; Adaptation; Aggression; Phylogeny; Sexual Offending; Violence; Age-crime curve; Conditional adaptation; Developmental criminology; Life history theory; Phenotypic plasticity; Proximate mechanisms; Dynamic risk factors; Desistance; Agency model of risk; Civilizing process; Ecological variations in crime; Historical trends in homicide; Punishment; Restorative justice; Situational crime prevention; Social crime prevention; Rehabilitation; Reintegration; The extended cognitive system; Distributed cognition; Emotion; Evolutionary criminology; Physical embodiment