ABSTRACT
What relevance are emotions to criminology? How may be understand the emotional aspects of crime and the criminological aspects of emotions? How can emotions be studied and analysed? Why should criminologists pay attention to emotions, feelings and affects? Questions such as these will be posed and answers will be proposed in this introduction. The introductory chapter thus seeks to locate and explore the phenomenon of emotions in an existing criminological context. Even though emotions have indeed been explored within the discipline of criminology, the interest in emotions so far has been comparatively sparse as compared to the ‘explosion of emotions’ evident in sociology in recent decades. The introduction argues that emotions provide an important yet relatively overlooked lens for studying and understanding various core criminological themes and fields. This introduction starts out by pointing to the many ways in which the topics of crime and emotions are closely interconnected before outlining the purpose and content of the volume.
