New Handbook Offers Global Perspective on Urban Crime
Experts explore multidisciplinary insights, emerging trends, and practical solutions
With urban populations soaring worldwide, understanding crime in cities and finding practical solutions is more relevant than ever. Responding to this growing need, Dietrich Oberwittler, Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law, Germany, and Rebecca Wickes, Professor of Criminology at the Griffith University, Australia, have published the newly released “Handbook on Cities and Crime”.
The multidisciplinary handbook features insightful contributions from eminent scholars in the field and provides an authoritative overview of scholarship on urban crime research. The volume reviews contemporary theoretical and methodological approaches, while also exploring practical implications and psychological impacts.
The different chapters cover general factors of urban crime, such as immigration, disasters, and gentrification, and more specific challenges, such as adolescent delinquency, gangs, and hate crime. Highlighting the diversity of urban crime, the handbook underscores the importance of considering perspectives from regions beyond the Global North.
With view to solutions, expert authors evaluate future avenues for preventing and controlling urban crime, including alternative approaches to policing, digital surveillance, and smart cities. This makes Handbook on Cities and Crime essential reading for academics and students in criminology, sociology, human geography, and urban studies, as well as professionals and policymakers in fields such as housing, policing, and ethnography.
Oberwittler and Wickes emphasize the broad relevance of their work: “By understanding the many factors that contribute to crime in cities, we can create safer, more inclusive urban spaces for everyone.”