Introduction: Why Do We Need to Build Complex, Temporal Explanations?

For some years now, I have been involved in a number of projects which—in one way or another—have sought to explain some aspect of crime through various lens. Aside from being about crime or responses to it, these projects have all sought to understand the ways in which a number of processes and influences have operated together, and, crucially, over time. These processes, which I and my colleagues sought to disentangle from one another, involved individuals and their decision-making, formal organisations (such as courts, probation services, political parties and the such like), institutions (such as families, ways of doing things), legal structures and other power making or shaping bodies (such as parliaments, laws or formalised policies which structure governance systems such as the welfare system).