The Explanation of Crime
Context, Mechanisms and Development

"The essays in this volume are amongst the most stimulating and original collections so far published, focusing explicitly on the theoretical foundations of developmental criminology. They take the analyses way beyond risk factors and a preoccupation with statistical sophistication to address the core questions of the processes through which human beings across the lifecourse shape and are shaped by their environments, and how individual factors and social contexts at multiple levels can be theorized simultaneously. In short, the authors provide a range of powerful new tools for thinking creatively about pathways into and out of crime." - Ross Homel, Foundation Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University, Australia

"This first volume in the “Pathways in Crime” series is a very timely book. It will definitely enhance scholarly debate in international criminology and significantly add to progress in empirical research on the complex dynamics of crime causation and control. By means of addressing an integrating/integrative approach with three key concepts: "context", "mechanisms", and "development", Per-Olof H. Wikström and Robert J. Sampson as editors and authors, together with the other internationally highly renowned authors, have been extremely successful in delineating a unified scholarly perspective of the dynamic interplay of behavioural contexts and individual differences in crime causation. This will also considerably influence practitioners and policy-makers in the field of community crime prevention." - Hans-J. Kerner, Director of the Institut für Kriminologie, Universität Tübingen

"In the last 25 years, the idea of “integration” in criminology has been bandied about as the wave of the future of the field, but nowhere has this concept been embraced with such vigour or commitment as displayed in The Explanation of Crime: Context, Mechanisms, and Development edited by Per-Olof H. Wikström and Robert J. Sampson. Assembling a stellar group of first-rate scholars representing a wide range of disciplinary interests, this volume is organized around three of the most important concepts in the understanding of crime – social context, mechanisms (processes), and individual development. A variety of fundamental topics including models of scientific explanation, the role of community context, situational mechanisms, behavioural genetics and environmental contributions, developmental risk and serious delinquency, self-control and social control, and desistance from crime are covered here and each in a provocative and innovative manner. Each author challenges the reader and often encourages them to disagree, all for the sake of a better understanding of crime. In a field that has become increasingly timid and afraid of bold ideas, this volume is a welcome relief. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in cross-level knowledge of crime." - John H. Laub Department of Criminology, University of Maryland

"Overall, the book is very interesting, intellectually stimulating, and even a little wild (e.g. Le Blanc presents vortex-like figures to illustrate the development of self and social control from a chaos theory viewpoint). The tradition in criminology has been to separate contextual and individual explanations of crime; this book points toward the importance of integrating these explanations and discovering the mechanisms by which they interact." - Canadian Journal of Sociology Online, Paul-Philippe Paré and Kenneth J. Preston, University of Western Ontario

"...a sophisticated and important contribution." - American Journal of Sociology

"Very rarely today in criminology do books make the sort of intellectual contribution necessary to shape and re-shape the field's thinking. By taking what is ultimately necessary to put forth big and new ideas, Wikstrom has done criminologists a large service by giving us the theoretical and empirical roadmap to follow for the next twenty-five years of research. This roadmap makes sense and good use of the current knowledge base, extends it to include both individual differences and situational factros, and explores notions of human agency in an effort to understand crime and criminal events." - King's Law Journal

"'It is only through critical discussion of these different analytical approaches and the empirical testing of competing idea's that we learn more about the causes of crime' the editors observe in their introduction (pp. 5-6). It is an admirable thesis and The Explanation of Crime admirably contributes to it.
Gilbert Geis, American Journal of Sociology