Publisher's Synopsis
Is using the humanities and social sciences (psychology, sociology, law, etc.) to understand the crime, the criminal, the victim, criminality, and society's reaction to crime a science? A crime is the unique combination of a perpetrator, a victim, and a set of circumstances. Its individual and quantitative analysis requires scientific methods and specfic intellectual and technical abilities. Emile Durkheim emphasizes that -[...] A number of acts can be observed, all with the external characteristic that once accomplished, they provoke this particular reaction from society known as punishment. We make of them a group sui generis, on which we impose a common rubric. We call any punished act a crime and make crime thus de ned the focus of a dedicated science: criminology.- About the editor: Alain Bauer is Professor, Chair of Criminology, National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts, Paris, Senior Fellow at the Terrorist Center of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York (USA), Senior Fellow at the Law and Political Science University of China in Beijing (PRC), President of the National Private Security Control Council (CNAPS) (since 2012), President of the Strategic Research High Council to the President of France (since 2009).
