In "Making Trouble" leading scholars in criminology, sociology, criminal justice, women's studies and social history explore the mediated cultural dynamics that construct images and understanding of crime, deviance and control. Contributors examine the intertwined practices of the mass media, criminal justice agencies, political power holders, and criminal and deviant subcultures themselves in producing and consuming contested representations of legality and illegality. In this light, contributors investigate a remarkable range of contemporary controversies, from drug dealing and drug wars, urban "predators", domestic violence and violent girls to immigrant "yardies", punk uprisings, freight train graffiti, terrorism, and anti-abortion violence. Yet while the collection provides broad analysis of contemporary topics, it at the same time weaves this analysis around a set of innovative and unifying themes.
These include the emergence of "situated media" within and between the various subcultures of crime, deviance and control; the evolution of policing and social control as complex webs of mediated and symbolic meaning; the role of power, identity and difference in framing contemporary crime controversies, with special attention paid to the gendered construction of crime, deviance, and control; and the importance of historical and cross-cultural dynamics in shaping understandings of crime, deviance and control.