The criminological contributions of Richard Quinney have spanned four decades and have spawned and energized both critical and peacemaking intellectual and activist movements in the field of Criminology. Quinney has been consistently recognized as one of a small handful of seminal thinkers in the discipline. The introduction illustrates how each chapter: has drawn inspiration from the crime-related writings of this influential criminologist; contains core assumptions of critical and peacemaking criminology; has application for the development of transformative justice as an alternative approach to the study of crime.

Part 1 features chapters generally falling within the parameters of critical criminology. Here, critical analyses are directed toward: linkages of capitalism and political economy to crime; state/corporate crime; feminist concerns about moral conscience; views of crime and justice among convict criminologists; prison as an industrial complex. Part 2 exhibits chapters oriented toward the development of peacemaking criminology. As such, peacemaking criminology is explored in regard to: an emergent theoretical model; a synthesis of Quinney's peacemaking-oriented writings; women's crime and mothers in prisons; teaching and learning about justice through a non-violent perspective; advocating justice reforms on the internet; its future directions in terms of theory and application.