Environmental Criminology
This chapter first sets out the book’s purpose, namely to provide researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners with the latest state-of-the-art knowledge of environmental criminology from around the world. It serves as a source for information on the core theoretical and empirical issues on how and why the physical and social environment influences the emergence of crime and how crime can affect the environment. The book covers most topics as intellectual challenges in criminology to question why and how the physical environment has an impact on individual and group behavior (and vice versa). The remainder of the chapter provides a background to the field of enquiry and articulates the rationale for assembling the chapters contained within this volume.