Book Review: Kriminologie
| Author | Joachim Kersten |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486588902200205 |
| Published date | 01 June 1989 |
| Date | 01 June 1989 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
124
BOOK REVIEWS
(1989) 22
ANZJ
Crim
Kriminologie,
Hans
Joachim Schneider, de Gruyter Lehrbuch (1987) 969pp +
CXL
VIIIpp references.
As Schneider's textbook is written in
German,
not too many criminologists in this
part
of the world will have a chance to work their way through this extensive
volume. Schneider is a
German
criminologist of international renown, most widely
known as a pioneer of victimology. In
Germany
(and certainly in
the
US) scholars
with a chair in criminology tend to write textbooks at certain stages of their careers,
and, accordingly, there is some competition in the business of writing (and selling)
textbooks. While in Australia there is not one textbook of Australian criminology
available, and, accordingly, one has to rely upon readings of differing standards of
quality, a
German
university lecturer in criminology has to choose between - let
us say - 10 recent textbooks of considerable scope and value for teaching general
and
specific aspects of the subject. Within this spectrum of textbooks written in
German,
Schneider's work seems to represent an outstanding example. This refers
to
the
size of the book and it also refers to some of the positions being
taken
by the
author.
The
textbook contains eight chapters, the first of which Schneider has entitled
"Some problems of criminological research". In this introductory
chapter
the
author
presents
what
could be termed anarrative of criminological research
problems using
European
and overseas examples. Chapter II defines criminology
as a scientific discipline in its own right rooted in the humanities and in the social
sciences. It contains an overview of historical currents in criminology, and describes
organisational and institutional features of the discipline in Germany,
Europe
and
on an international level. .
In
Chapter
III Schneider leads his audience into the workshop of
our
trade. We
look into the methodological toolbox and learn about measurement and dimensions
of criminality, its historical development, and its geographical distribution. The
making of crime statistics is analysed, the dark figure of unreported crime discussed.
Again, Schneider presents a wide range of international research and provides the
reader
with a very comprehensive picture of self-report and victimisation studies.
At
this stage of the book the reviewer became increasingly concerned with a
potential risk of Schneider's method of "universal" research compilation, namely
the
risk of basing far-reaching conclusions on insubstantial evidence. If Schneider
writes in (yet another) historical overview that "medieval man was well-acquainted
with death and the
other
world" or that in the middle ages "there was no such thing
as juvenile delinquency", when he goes on to dismiss Robin
Hood
as a fake image
and
tells us that "life in the forest was extremely harsh and not romantic", he bases
his opinions
and.statements
on one British reference. It was then this reviewer
started to feel uncomfortable. Doubts about the reliability of some of Schneider's
"global" research accumulation increased when it was detected that the
author
had
repeated
amistake made in an Australian text, amistake which should have been
obvious to a
German
criminologist. On p285 Schneider reprints agraph produced
by Clifford and Harding who based their comparison of international crime rates on
Australian Institute of Criminology data. This specific graph about burglaries
depicts West Germany as the country with the highest rate of all nations compared
in this survey. This is misleading because the rate of reported break
and
enter
in
West Germany is actually less than one-fourth of the Australian figure.
The
category of "aggravated theft" was being used as an equivalent of "burglary", and
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