The causes of crime and the boundaries of criminal justice

This chapter considers some of the principal traditions of thought concerned with the causes of crime. It should be acknowledged at the outset that there is no one correct or obvious way of selecting and classifying the theories to be considered in a survey of this kind. In this chapter we trace, in broad terms, the connections of criminological theory to the practice of criminal justice. Far from being straightforward, these connections are contingent, complex and variable in nature. Thus, criminal justice practitioners (lawyers, Judges, police, correctional officers, probation and parole officers, and so on) perform their everyday professional roles without a systematic knowledge of the theories of crime and bodies of research developed by criminologists. Even within the academic community the study and teaching of criminal justice and criminal law have tended to remain separate from criminology and (no less so) from each other.