Understanding Victimization and Offending

Abstract

The study of law and society has drawn interest from many different disciplines. Beginning with sometimes awkward discussions between academic lawyers and sociologists of law some 40 years ago, scholars of various stripes have created a broad and lively interdisciplinary field of study. Indeed, the field is now so broad that no single network of scholarly communication currently exists, even when the focus of inquiry is seemingly well defined. “;Youth and justice” is an obvious example because it is the focus of specialized inquiry for a number of disciplines: law, sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science, social work, criminology, each of which conforms to its own disciplinary constitution and perspective. A major purpose of this volume is to bring these different perspectives together as a way of breaking down interdisciplinary barriers.