Searching for the Victim in the General Sociological Literature on Crime

Abstract

In the last fifty years, the sociology of crime has been transformed by a changing ideological climate, the politicization of crime research and a greater isolation of criminology with respect to its theories, methods, organization and physical location outside of sociology departments. The objective of this paper is to explore how these changes may have influenced today's general sociological literature on crime. We begin by laying out our basic theoretical assumptions. Next, the article offers an assessment of crime's status in the sociological literature throughout the twentieth century. Finally, we move to a more detailed analysis of the current research on crime. We analyze four consecutive issues from 31 general sociology journals published in 2003–2004. A thematic distinction is drawn between articles that focus on the perpetrators of crime and articles that highlight the effects of crime on its victims. After substantiating and refining this distinction, we identify where most of the articles belong in this typology and explain why our findings are important to anyone interested in the study of crime.