The return of emotions to debates about crime and criminal justice has been a striking development of recent decades across many jurisdictions. This has been registered in the return of shame to justice procedures, a heightened focus on victims and their emotional needs, fear of crime as a major preoccupation of citizens and politicians, and highly emotionalised public discourses on crime and justice. But how can we best make sense of these developments? Do we need to create "emotionally intelligent" justice systems, or are we messing recklessly with the rational foundations of liberal criminal justice? This volume brings together leading criminologists and sociologists from across the world in a much needed conversation about how to re-calibrate reason and emotion in crime and justice today. The contributions range from the micro-analysis of emotions in violent encounters to the paradoxes and tensions that arise from the emotionalisation of criminal justice in the public sphere. They explore the emotional labour of workers in police and penal institutions, the justice experiences of victims and offenders, and the role of vengeance, forgiveness and regret in the aftermath of violence and conflict resolution. The result is a set of original essays which offer a fresh and timely perspective on problems of crime and justice in contemporary liberal democracies.

In spite of the fact that crime is an emotive topic, the question of emotion has been largely overlooked in criminological research, which has tended instead to examine criminal conduct in terms of structural background variables or rational decision-making. Building on research into emotions within sociology, this book seeks to show how criminologists can in fact take emotions seriously and why criminology needs to begin considering emotions as a central element of its theoretical, conceptual and methodological apparatus. Thematically organised and presenting both empirical and theoretical studies, Emotions and Crime pays attention to the different emotional dimensions of crime, victimhood, the criminal justice system, the practice of criminological research and the discipline of criminology. Bringing together the work of an international team of authors and discussing research into violence, punishment, gender, imprisonment and mass atrocity, this volume shows how crime and emotions are inextricably connected, and illustrates both the hidden and pervasive role of emotions in criminological work.

This book is the first volume to explore criminal justice work and criminological research through the lens of emotional labour. A concept first coined 30 years ago, emotional labour seeks to explore the ways in which people manage their emotions in order to achieve the aims of their organisations, and the subsequent impact of this is on workers and service users. The chapters in this edited collection explore work in a wide range of criminal justice institutions as well as the penal voluntary sector. In addition to literature review chapters which consolidate what we already know, this book includes case study chapters which extend our knowledge of how emotional labour is performed in specific contexts, and in relation to certain types of work. Emotional Labour in Criminal Justice and Criminology covers topics such as prisoners who die from natural causes in prison, to the work of independent domestic violence advisors and the use of emotion by death penalty lawyers in the US. An accessible and compelling read, this book presents ground-breaking qualitative and quantitative research which will be critical to criminologists, criminal justice practitioners, students of criminology and academics in the fields of social policy and public service.

Analyses how restorative justice conferences work as a unique form of justice ritual, with a pioneering new approach to the micro-level study of conferences and recommendations to improve the practice. It examines both failed and successful rituals, and provides a statistical model of the ritual elements and how these may impact reoffending.

In this startling look at evil behavior, a UCLA sociologist tries to get inside the criminal psyche to understand what it means or feels, signifies, sounds, tastes, or looks like to do any particular crime.

Our understanding of criminal behaviour and its causes has been too long damaged by the failure to integrate fully the emotional, psychological, social and cultural influences on the way people behave. This book aims to integrate psychological and criminological perspectives in order to better understand the nature of criminal behaviour. In particular it aims to explore the range of psychological approaches that seek to understand the significance of the emotions that surround criminal behaviour, allowing for an exploration of individual differences and social and cultural issues which help to bridge the gaps between disciplinary approaches. The book puts forward a model for understanding behaviour through a better grasp of the link between emotions, morality and culture and argues that crime can often be viewed as emerging from disordered social relationships.

"This book investigates why, when, and how ordinary human beings hold some individuals guilty of crimes, but others less so or not at all. Why, for example, do the emotions of the accused sometimes aggravate a murder, making it a heinous crime, whereas other emotions might mitigate that murder to manslaughter, excuse a killing ("by reason of insanity"), or even justify it ("by reason of self-defense")? And what emotions on the part of jurors come into play as they arrive at their decisions? The authors argue persuasively that U.S. law is out of touch with the way that jurors' "commonsense justice" works and the way they judge culpability. This disconnect has resulted in some inconsistent verdicts across different types of cases and thus has serious implications for whether the law will be respected and obeyed. Problems arise because criminal law has no unified theory of emotion and culpability, and legal scholars often seem to misunderstand or ignore what psychologists know about emotion. The authors skillfully show that the law's culpability theories are (and must be) psychological at heart, and they propose ways in which psychology can help inform and support the law. Throughout, the authors deftly weave examples from real-life high profile cases such as those of John Lee Malvo, Andrea Yates, and Bernard Goetz, as well as--unexpectedly--illuminating examples from the psychologically sophisticated tragedies of Shakespeare"--Jacket. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)