Introduction to Criminology
Edited by Dr. Shereen Hassan and Dan Lett, MAS
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Link to Resource: Introduction to
Criminology<https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/introcrim/>
Although this open education resource (OER) is written with the needs and abilities of
first-year undergraduate criminology students in mind, it is designed to be flexible. As a
whole, the OER is amply broad to serve as the main textbook for an introductory course,
yet each chapter is deep enough to be useful as a supplement for subject-area courses;
authors use plain and accessible language as much as possible, but introduce more
advanced, technical concepts where appropriate; the text gives due attention to the
historical “canon” of mainstream criminological thought, but it also challenges many of
these ideas by exploring alternative, critical, and marginalized perspectives. After all,
criminology is more than just the study of crime and criminal law; it is an examination of
the ways human societies construct, contest, and defend ideas about right and wrong, the
meaning of justice, the purpose and power of laws, and the practical methods of responding
to broken rules and of mending relationships.
Special thanks to Leah Ballantyne, LLB LLM, a Cree lawyer from the Mathias Colomb Cree
Nation in Pukatawagan, Manitoba, who provided expert Indigenous consultation/editing for
this textbook.
This OER was jointly funded and supported by KPU Arts, KPU OER Grants, KPU OPUS, BCcampus
and the Justice Institute of BC.
Check out the KPU Pressbooks Catalogue<https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/catalog/openkpu>
of works published by the Open Publishing Suite
(OPUS)<https://www.kpu.ca/library/OPUS> at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
Learn more about KPU Open Education<http://www.kpu.ca/open>.
Follow us on Twitter at @KPUopen<https://twitter.com/KPUopen>.
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Amanda Grey, MLIS (she/her)
Open Education Strategist, Teaching & Learning Commons
Kwantlen Polytechnic University
e amanda.grey@kpu.ca<mailto:amanda.grey@kpu.ca>
w
www.kpu.ca/open<http://www.kpu.ca/open>
I live, work, and play in a region south of the Fraser River which overlaps with the
unceded traditional and ancestral lands of the Kwantlen, Musqueam, Katzie, Semihamoo,
Tsawwassen, Qayqayt, and Kwikwetlen peoples.
Kwantlen Polytechnic University ► Where thought meets action