Routledge Studies in Crime, Culture and Media
About the Book Series
Routledge Studies in Crime, Culture and Media offers the very best in research that seeks to understand crime through the context of culture, cultural processes and media.
The series welcomes monographs and edited volumes from across the globe, and across a variety of disciplines. Books will offer fresh insights on a range of topics, including news reporting of crime; moral panics and trial by media; media and the police; crime in film; crime in fiction; crime in TV; crime and music; 'reality' crime shows; the impact of new media including mobile, Internet and digital technologies, and social networking sites; the ways media portrayals of crime influence government policy and lawmaking; the theoretical, conceptual and methodological underpinnings of cultural criminology.
Books in the series will be essential reading for those researching and studying criminology, media studies, cultural studies and sociology.
Hauntology: An Introduction for Criminologists
1st Edition
By Paul McGuinness, Alex Simpson, Tea Fredriksson, Michael Fiddler
October 29, 2025
In response to the recent ‘spectral turn’ within criminology this book presents, for the first time, a concise, comprehensive, approachable, and critically engaged guide to hauntology for criminological researchers and graduate students. Hauntology is, in essence, a mode of analysing the ...
An Epistemology of Criminological Cinema
1st Edition
By David Grčki, Rafe McGregor
August 29, 2025
Standing at the intersection of criminology and philosophy, this book demonstrates the ways in which mythic movies and television series can provide an understanding of actual crimes and social harms. Taking three social problems as its subjects – capitalist political economy, structural injustice,...
Social Media and Law Enforcement Practice in Poland: Insights into Practice Outside Anglophone Countries
1st Edition
Edited
By Paweł Waszkiewicz
August 29, 2025
This book explores the role of social media in the daily practice of Polish criminal justice and how social media is, in turn, reshaping this practice. Based on empirical research, it confronts common beliefs about how police officers, prosecutors, and judges use social media in their work. Readers...
Anthropocide: An Essay in Green Cultural Criminology
1st Edition
By Rafe McGregor
January 17, 2025
Through an examination of Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, this book demonstrates the ability of cinematic fictions, and other complex narrative fictions, to contribute to meeting the climate challenge by shaping the desires of audiences. What if there was a single feature film that showed us ...
Human Trafficking Hysteria: Historical and Modern Perspectives on Moral Panics, Media, and Crime
1st Edition
By Sarah Hupp Williamson
January 07, 2025
Through cultural criminology, this book brings together existing research to provide an overview of historical and modern moral panics related to human trafficking. What do you picture when you hear the words human trafficking? Perhaps you imagine someone kidnapped and sold as shown in films or ...
America’s Horror Stories: U.S. History through Dark Tourism
1st Edition
By Kevin Revier, Favian Alejandro Martín
December 31, 2024
America’s Horror Stories: U.S. History through Dark Tourism conducts a ghost tour(ist) methodology to explore how slavery and racism are represented in dark tourism via ghost tours. The authors travel to key sites of racist U.S. history, including Salem, Massachusetts, where a witch panic was ...
Sexual and Physical Violence in Australian Punk and Hardcore Music Scenes
1st Edition
By Ash Barnes
December 30, 2024
Focused on the Australian punk and hardcore music scene, this book provides an innovative balance between the acknowledgement of harm and the celebration of pleasure in live music spaces. Despite decades of advocacy within vibrant music communities, stories of sexual and physical violence persist. ...
A Popular Criminology of Youth Justice: Youth on Film
1st Edition
By Jessica Urwin
December 19, 2024
Analysing the representation of youth crime and justice-involved children in popular fictional films, this book explores how what we see on screen contributes to the perceptions of youth justice in society, policy, and practice. Putting forward the argument that fictional representations have a ...
Music in Crime, Resistance, and Identity
1st Edition
Edited
By Eleanor Peters
October 07, 2024
This book considers the intersection of music, politics and identity, focusing on music (genres) across the world as a form of political expression and protest, positive identity formations, and also how the criminalisation, censuring, policing and prosecution of musicians and fans can occur. ...
Social Media and Criminal Justice
1st Edition
By Xiaochen Hu, Nicholas P. Lovrich
September 23, 2024
Discussing social media-related scholarship found in criminology, legal studies, policing, courts, corrections, victimization, and crime prevention, this book presents the current state of our knowledge on the impact of social media and the major sociological frameworks employed to study the U.S. ...
Video Games, Crime, and Control: Getting Played
1st Edition
Edited
By Kevin F. Steinmetz, Jonathan A. Grubb
September 09, 2024
Discussing the state of play in contemporary popular culture, specifically the role of crime and crime control in the video game medium, this book discusses the criminological importance of video games. Pulling together an international group of scholars from Brazil, Canada, Sweden, the United ...
True Crime and Women: Writers, Readers, and Representations
1st Edition
Edited
By Lili Pâquet, Rosemary Williamson
August 22, 2024
Bringing new research from true crime writers, scholars, and media practitioners around the world, this book offers fresh perspectives on how women read, write, and are portrayed in true crime stories across different platforms, including documentaries, podcasts, and TikToks. The genre of true ...