Sociology & Criminology for a Changing World
Thinking About Crime, published in 2004 by American criminologist Michael Tonry, offers a scathing critique of punitive crime control policies in the United States. Building on decades of policy analysis and empirical research, Tonry dismantles the assumptions underpinning the “tough on crime” agenda and argues for a more rational, evidence-based approach to criminal justice. The
The Police Power: Patriarchy and the Foundations of American Government (2005) is a foundational work by German-American legal scholar Markus D. Dubber. Following the tradition of critical legal philosophy, Dubber uncovers the genealogical and ideological roots of the state monopoly on violence—particularly executive power that operates not through criminal law, but through mechanisms of social
Class, State, and Crime: On the Theory and Practice of Criminal Justice (1977) by Richard Quinney is one of the most influential Marxist analyses of crime and social control in the United States. The book combines a materialist analysis of society with a radical critique of the state’s penal system and is a key text
The Felon (1970) by American sociologist John Irwin is one of the most influential analyses of the lived realities of formerly incarcerated individuals. As a former inmate turned sociologist, Irwin combines personal experience with academic analysis. His central aim: to reconstruct the social processes through which ex-prisoners remain stigmatized as “criminals” and become socially marginalized