Book Review: Sumner, C. (Ed.). (2004). The Blackwell Companion to Criminology. Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 516

• Author: Michael P. Brown
• Date: 01 December 2007
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016807310622
• Published date: 01 December 2007
• Subject Matter: Articles

Book Review(s)

Sumner, C. (Ed.). (2004). The Blackwell Companion to Criminology.

Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 516

DOI: 10.1177/0734016807310622

Colin Sumner is a distinguished scholar whose contributions to the academy span some

30 years. His first book, Reading Ideologies: An Investigation Into the Marxist Theory of

Ideology and Law, was published in 1979 (London: Academic Press) and was followed by

Crime, Justice and Underdevelopment (1982, London: Heinemann Educational Books),

Censure, Politics, and Criminal Justice (1990, Buckingham, UK: Open University Press),

The Sociology of Deviance: An Obituary, (1994, London: Continuum International

Publishing Group), Social Control and Political Order: European Perspectives at the End

of the Century (with Roberto Bergalli, 1997, London: Sage), and Violence, Culture and

Censure (1997, London: Taylor and Francis Group). Colin Sumner has also served as series

editor for New Directions in Criminology (Berkshire, UK: Open University Press) and

cofounded with Piers Beirne the journal of Theoretical Criminology (Sage).

The Blackwell Companion to Criminology is Colin Sumner’s latest book. It is not

intended to be comprehensive but rather “stimulate development within criminology across

the globe” (p. viii). To that end, Colin Sumner selected a collection of cutting-edge essays

that address diverse global criminological issues. Most of the essays are sociological,

reflecting the predominant influence of sociology on criminology.

The book is divided into six thematic parts, with four to five essays per part. Part I serves

as an introduction to the book by providing a broad theoretical overview of international

issues in criminology. The essays address such broad topics as the social nature of crime

and deviance, theories of social control in the United States and Europe, the war on crime,

and genocide and modernity. These essays lay an important foundation for understanding

issues and themes discussed in the rest of the book

Parts II and III focus on topics of global significance: (a) juvenile delinquency and juvenile

justice and (b) criminal punishments and correctional philosophies, respectively. The essays

in Part II discuss gangs, youth crime, and its control in Japan; how a consumer culture is

related to law violations; and the politics of youth crime and justice in Africa. The essays in

Part III include those that explore correctional policies and politics, alternatives to incarcera-

tion, rehabilitation programming, and punishing female offenders. Together these essays

speak to how history and context shape our understanding of criminal conduct by adults and

juveniles, and the influence of correctional philosophies on criminal sanctioning.

Parts IV and V attend to issues that are at the forefront of recent criminological thinking.

In Part IV, the essays pertain to the relationship between gender and crime and include

examinations of feminism, violence by men, the masculinities of crime, the criminalization

of sodomy, and the process of “genderizing” and “racializing” criminalized others. The

essays in Part V consider how capital and power are related to crime through discussions

of white-collar crime, crimes committed by multinational corporations, the illicit drug trade

in Hong Kong, and trafficking humans in west and central Africa.

Part VI is the capstone of this book, and it is international and contemporary in scope. It

examines, on many levels, the globalization of crime and the centrality of information

431

Criminal Justice Review

Volume 32 Number 4

December 2007 431-484

© 2007 Georgia State University

Research Foundation, Inc.

http://cjr.sagepub.com

hosted at

http://online.sagepub.com