In Violent Criminal Acts and Actors Revisited, Lonnie Athens returns to his pioneering work and enlarges his original explanations of violent crime, constructed from case-by-case analyses of chilling, first-person accounts. He now takes into account not only the violent act and actor, but also the community that the actor inhabits and in which the act occurs. On the basis of this expanded theory, he outlines a new policy for the control of violent crime.

Athens also tells the story behind his study, including research blunders made along the way, the violence out of which the study was born, the ongoing violence in which it was steeped, and the hostile reception it met when it was originally published. While recounting this journey, he uncovers some deeply rooted problems that still plague the field of criminology.