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Why the Social Sciences Matter pp 143–160Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Crime, Policing and Compliance with the Law

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the contribution that social scientific research has made to our understanding of crime and its control. As a British criminologist, my focus is on Anglophone criminology, which means — largely but not entirely — Anglo-American work. I have attempted not to be parochial in drawing solely on the British experience. As a discipline (or perhaps a sub-discipline, or a multi-disciplinary fusion of the sociology of deviance, the psychology of offending and criminal law) criminology is a fairly recent invention, which can be dated to the 1950s in the UK and the US. I shall argue that its impact on academic understanding of the issues has been substantial. Until the immediate post-war period, the police, prosecutors and judiciary in industrialised countries were hidden effectively from research scrutiny. I shall summarise developments since then in three areas of criminological research:

  • crime trends and social indicators of crime

  • police work and the impact of the police on crime

  • the role of normative compliance in explaining conformity with the law.

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Authors
  1. Mike Hough
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Kellogg College, University of Oxford, UK

    Jonathan Michie (President) (President)

  2. Lancaster University, UK

    Cary L. Cooper (Distinguished Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health) (Distinguished Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health)

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© 2015 Mike Hough

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Hough, M. (2015). Crime, Policing and Compliance with the Law. In: Michie, J., Cooper, C.L. (eds) Why the Social Sciences Matter. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137269928_10

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