ABSTRACT
Trying to get to the core (if indeed there is a core) of the crime problem is an extraordinarily difficult, complex, but exciting enterprise. Many criminologists have taken their spades to it, but they have barely cracked the mantle, never mind approached the core. Thomas Bernard (2002) has made the point that decades of criminological research has not yielded the accumulation of “taken for granted” knowledge that is the hallmark of any discipline claiming to be a science. The problem has been not with the tenacity with which they have dug, but with the instruments that they have used and with their stubborn refusal to accept any help proffered by the more fundamental sciences.
