Book review: Glenn D Walters, Closing the Integration Gap in Criminology. The Case for Criminological Thinking
| Author | Martine Herzog-Evans |
| Published date | 01 August 2021 |
| Date | 01 August 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20662203211034012 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Book reviews
European Journal of Probation
2021, Vol. 13(2) 199–206
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/20662203211034012
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Book reviews
Glenn D Walters, Closing the Integration Gap in Criminology. The Case for Criminological Thinking.
Abington: Routledge, 2020; 202 pp.: ISBN: 9780367347703, £96 (hbk), £29.59 (pbk).
Reviewed by: Martine Herzog-Evans, University of Reims, France
Glenn Walters is assuredly one of the most impressive criminologists of our time. Not
only is he an exceptionally prolific theorist and empiricist, but his goal is to contribute to
offender treatment in practice. Before Closing the Gap, he published Modelling the
Criminal Lifestyle. Theorizing at the Edge of Chaos (2017) with the ambition to advance
the understanding of the criminal lifestyle which, as Taxman has rightfully stated, is
insufficiently conceptualised (Taxman and Pattavina, 2013). Closing the Integration Gap
must be read alongside Modelling the Criminal Lifestyle as the former is a larger re-
formulation of the latter.
In 2020, Walters capitalised on his ‘Oeuvre’in the true sense of the term by stating that
his two main constructs (criminal lifestyle and criminal thinking styles) can be integrated,
along with other models (e.g. Bandura, 1986, social cognitive theory), and thereby,
provide the basis for a new integrative criminological macro-theory.
There could be a certain arrogance in taking up such a challenge. Walters begins by
calling other models, such as self-control or differential association, ‘micro-level con-
structs’because they rely on a ‘small number of concepts to explain a phenomenon as
complex as crime’(preface, p. X). In a way, Hirschi and Gottfredson (2020, who also
wrote a book which updated and integrated their two models of control) get their
comeuppance, as they have always been quite virulent towards other models. However,
Walters certainly has the empirical, theoretical and practical breadth to sit at the table with
the Greatest. And he is not arrogant; he is just ambitious. After his initial critique, he does
not waste time on unnecessary criticism; he elaborates and builds.
In both Modelling the Criminal Lifestyle and Closing the Gap, Walters relies, as any
integrative scientist should, on some of the most solid and best validated models, some of
which are theories, one of which is an ensemble of empirical findings and still another is a
type of psychopathology. These are the following:
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