Criminology Today: An Integrative Introduction - Update (3rd Edition)

The American crime picture has changed, and Criminology Today 3e UPDATE has changed with it, including the most up to date coverage available of terrorism, white-collar crime and other issues of major concern to criminologists at the start of the 21st century. Interesting, timely, and relevant, Criminology Today 3e UPDATE helps students draw their own conclusions about the American crime problem, prepare for the future, and learn to make informed decisions about public policy in the crime-control area.

Frank Schmalleger, Ph.D., is professor emeritus at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He is also director of the justice Research Association (JRA), a private consulting firm and think tank focusing on issues of crime and justice. The Justice Research Association, which is based in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, serves the needs of the nation's civil and criminal justice planners and administrators through workshops, conferences, and grant-writing and program-evaluation support. JRA also supports the Criminal Justice Distance Learning Consortium (CJDLC), which can be found on the Web at http://cjdlc.org, Talk Justice (http://talkjustice.com), and the Cybrary―also known as "the world's criminal justice directory" (http://cybrary.info).

Dr. Schmalleger holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame and Ohio State University, having earned both a master's (1970) and a doctorate in sociology (1974) from Ohio State University with a special emphasis in criminology. From 1976 to 1994, he taught criminal justice courses at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. For the last 16 of those years he chaired the university's Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice. As an adjunct professor with Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, Schmalleger helped develop the university's graduate program in security administration and loss prevention. He taught courses in that curriculum for more than a decade. Schmalleger has also taught in the New School for Social Research's online graduate program, helping build the world's first electronic classrooms in support of distance learning through computer telecommunications. An avid Web surfer and site builder, Schmalleger is also the creator of award-winning World Wide Web sites, including one which supports this textbook (http://www.crimtoday.com).

Frank Schmalleger is the author of numerous articles and many books, including the widely used Criminal Justice Today: An Introductory Text for the 21st Century (Prentice Hall, 2003), now in its seventh edition; Criminal Justice: A Brief Introduction, fifth edition (Prentice Hall, 2004); Criminal Law Today (Prentice Hall, 2002); with John Smykla, Corrections in the 21st Century (Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2001); Crime and the Justice System in America: An Encyclopedia (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997); Trial of the Century: People of the State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson (Prentice Ha11,1996); Career Paths: A Guide to Jobs in Federal Law Enforcement (Regents/Prentice Hall, 1994); Computers in Criminal Justice (Wyndham Hall Press, 1991); Criminal Justice Ethics (Greenwood Press, 1991);Finding Criminal Justice in the Library (Wyndham Hall Press, 1991); (Wyndham Hall Press, 1990); A History of Corrections (Foundations Press of Notre Dame, 1983); and The Social Basis of Criminal Justice (University Press of America, 1981). Schmalleger is also founding editor of the journal The Justice Professional.

Schmalleger's philosophy of both teaching and writing can be summed up in these words: "In order to communicate knowledge we must first catch, then hold, a person's interest―be it student, colleague, or policymaker. Our writing, our speaking, and our teaching must be relevant to the problems facing people today, and they must―in some way―help solve those problems."