The Political Economy of Crime

Abstract

This chapter surveys the literature of nineteenth- and twentieth-century criminology, and associated social scientific fields, in respect of the issue of 'political economy' and crime. In twentieth-century criminology, probably the best-known attempt at exploring the impact of the economic cycle on crime has been Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer's examination of the relation between unemployment and imprisonment. The polarization of the labour market in the United States, Britain, and other western industrial societies that was produced by technological advances in the 1950s and 1960s was relatively insignificant, by comparison with the convulsions that occurred in the 1980s. Much of this early North American literature on the political economy of crime is informed by a generalized political concern at the extraordinary costs to the state of the continuing post-war expansion in the criminal justice system.