The fourth edition of Criminal Law Today presents a comprehensive, accessible, and up-to-date introduction to the basics of criminal law. The text provides students with the tools and information they need to gain an understanding of the fundamental nature of law, general legal principles, the historical development of criminal law, and its form and function in American society today. Key features are case excerpts that illustrate important legal themes in the context of the chapter topics.
Frank Schmalleger, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame and Ohio State University, having earned both a master's (1970) and a doctorate in sociology (1974) from Ohio State University with a special emphasis in criminology.
From 1976 to 1994, he taught criminology and criminal justice courses at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. For the last 16 of those years, he chaired the university's Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice. The university named him Distinguished Professor in 1991.
Schmalleger has taught in the online graduate program of the New School for Social Research, helping to build the world's first electronic classrooms in support of distance learning through computer telecommunications. As an adjunct professor with Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, Schmalleger helped develop the university's graduate program in security administration and loss prevention. He taught courses in that curriculum for more than a decade.
Frank Schmalleger is the author of numerous articles and more than 30 books, including the widely used Criminal Justice: A Brief Introduction (Prentice Hall, 2010), Criminology Today (Prentice Hall, 2009), and Criminal Law Today (Prentice Hall, 2011).
Schmalleger is also founding editor of the journal Criminal Justice Studies. He has served as editor for the Prentice Hall series Criminal Justice in the Twenty-First Century and as imprint adviser for Greenwood Publishing Group's criminal justice reference series.
Schmalleger's philosophy of both teaching and writing can be summed up in these words: "In order to communicate knowledge we must first catch, then hold, a person's interest--be it student, colleague, or policymaker. Our writing, our speaking, and our teaching must be relevant to the problems facing people today, and they must in some way help solve those problems." Visit the author's website at http://www.schmalleger.com.
