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Political Crime And Pedagogy: A Content Analysis Of Criminology And Criminal Justice Texts, Kenneth Tunnell

Kenneth Tunnell

A study examines the quantity and quality of coverage given by introductory criminology and criminal justice texts to political crime and criminals. Data were derived from a content analysis of 49 recent introductory textbooks. Criminal justice texts devoted only 7.83 pages of 15,112 total text pages (.051%) to political crime. Criminology texts devoted only 250.5 of 9,081 total pages (2.758%) and 6 of 305 chapters (1.96%) to this issue. The differences between criminology and criminal justice texts were statistically significant. Qualitatively, the most common form of political crime to appear in introductory texts was international terrorism. Assassinations and government corruption …