ABSTRACT
Explanations of criminal and deviant behavior have been of interest to researchers for centuries. To that end, the study of crime and deviance has dominated the academic community and there have been many textbooks written to address this field. However, most of the textbooks on these topics fall into one of two camps – one with a focus on applying theories to the criminal justice system without any discussion of the propositions or variables in the theory, or one with a focus on the development and testing of the different theoretical approaches. This text attempts to do neither. Rather, this text chose to look at the different orientations through the lens of the original theorists. By “profiling” the theorist, the theory, and the major theoretical works, the authors give the readers a true inside look at the minds of major theorists of crime and the sociology of deviance – bridging the gap between these two fields.
