Experimental Criminology: Prospects for Advancing Science and Public Policy

Description

Experimental criminology is a part of a larger and increasingly expanding scientific research and evidence-based movement in social policy. The essays in this volume report on new and innovative contributions that experimental criminology is making to basic scientific knowledge and public policy. Contributors explore cutting-edge experimental and quasi-experimental methods and their application to important and topical issues in criminology and criminal justice, including neurological predictors of violence, peer influence on delinquency, routine activities and capable guardianship, early childhood prevention programs, hot spots policing, and correctional treatment for juvenile and adult offenders. It is the first book to examine the full scope of experimental criminology, from experimental tests - in the field and in the laboratory - of criminological theories and concepts to experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations of crime prevention and criminal justice interventions.

Brandon C. Welsh is a Professor of Criminology at Northeastern University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement. Anthony A. Braga is Don M. Gottfredson Professor of Evidence-Based Criminology at Rutgers University and a Senior Research Fellow in the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at Harvard University. Gerben J. N. Bruinsma is Director of the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement and a Professor of Environmental Criminology at VU University in Amsterdam.

'Editors Welsh, Braga and Bruinsma bring readers an excellent collection of writings that justify, and strongly advocate for, the use of scientific method in criminology ... This comprehensive and very well-organized work would be an excellent volume for academic use in research methods courses in criminology; it would also clearly illustrate the complexities of crime policy for the policy maker. Summing up: highly recommended.' F. E. Knowles, Choice