ABSTRACT
Newcomers to criminology, and specifically the study of crime prevention/ reduction and criminal justice policy, may be surprised to learn that the subject has not been dominated by studying offenders and gaining insights from them to inform policy. It might seem a strange omission; a parallel might be the army failing to learn about the skill and resources of the opposition before deploying soldiers. The military may have good reasons for not being able to do so: their threat or adversary is not always easy to engage and not always willing to impart information, but offenders provide a captive audience and a range of studies have shown that they are often willing to engage in meaningful research. The problem is that they are rarely asked and as a consequence we know much less than we could about how to prevent crime.
