Jock Young Essay

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'Don't believe the hysteria about crime' as mentioned by Jock Young tells a lot about his insight and contributions to the area of criminology, that crime is not as easily thought to be defined by official statistics of both recorded and unrecorded crime but that it varies and changes with factors such as the offenders and the victims where the former are surprisingly not the main antagonist which leads us to consider the role played by the community as well as the criminal justice system. Professor Jock Young, born in 1942 is both an academic and an author. He is a professor of Sociology at the University of Kent and is both well-known and well-respected for his academic contributions to criminology in terms of published books, articles and writings. Some of his notable works would most definitely be the development of the Left Realism Criminology and the ground-breaking book, What is To Be Done About Law and Order (both along with John Lea) which since its first publication in 1984 has come to be considered an essential contribution to the development of a more down to earth approach to the problem of crime and its control. His main interests reside in the processes of social inclusion and exclusion and the role it plays in today’s modern world as seen in one of his personal favourite work, what is to be done? What is to be done about Law and Order, the founding text for the ‘left realist’ criminology (one of his favourite works which was a joint effort with John Lea) when first published in 1984, was first met with a considerable amount of doubt and criticism. In time, controversy surrounding their analysis depleted considerably as regards to the significant increase in street crime motivated by social and economic deprivation as well as the extended crisis of policing. Yet, this successful insight on both Jock and John’s part has been met with arguments that the
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