Edited by Jane L. Wood and Theresa A. Gannon. Crime and Crime Reduction. The importance of Group Processes. 2013. East Sussex, Routledge, pp. 206

Abstract

Over years, many studies have devoted effort in understanding the criminal mind alternating a set of interdisciplinary approaches. However, less attention was given to the influence of peers in criminal acts. The status, abiding rules and other social skills are of paramount importance to understand the attachment of people to crime. As this backdrop, Jane L Wood and Theresa A. Gannon compiled an intriguing book aimed at exploring the connection of social environs, family, social bonds and crime. To the biological basis of criminali-ty proposed by Lombroso and colleagues followed the cultural-related theories, most of them coined in US, a country which was experiencing substantial demographic changes because of the mass-migration from Europe. Today, specialists are discussing that crime would be shaped in the free will of the subject, but would be determined by peer-pressure. Key factors such as self-esteem, status, retaliation and rule-reinforcement should be placed to the lens of scrutiny if social scientists want to expand the current understanding of criminality. Otherwise, Wood and Gannon add, the rich-empirical research as well as the efforts of Government to mitigate the local crime is backfired. This book exhibits a more pungent thesis; many criminals wish to be recognized by their peers. In so doing, crime seems to be in the only instrument to achieve their goals. The societies can be understood through the analysis of their criminals .