Criminality in Context: The Psychological Foundations of Criminal Justice Reform (Psychology, Crime, and Justice Series)

In this groundbreaking book that is built on decades of work on the front lines of the criminal justice system, expert psychologist Craig Haney provides a blueprint for fundamental reform by changing our understanding of who commits crime and why. Based on a comprehensive review and analysis of psychological research, Haney offers a carefully constructed framework for enhancing legal fairness and reducing crime through proactive prevention instead of reactive punishment. Haney meticulously reviews evidence documenting the ways in which a person’s social history, institutional experiences, and present circumstances powerfully shape their life course, with a special focus on the role of social, economic, and racial injustice in crime causation. He thus effectively debunks the “crime master narrative”—the widespread myth that criminality is a product of free and autonomous “bad” choices—an increasingly anachronistic view that cannot bear the weight of contemporary psychological data and theory. This is a must-read for understanding the origins of criminal behavior and developing a fair and effective system to address them.