Colin Webster – författare

The book provides a conceptual framework in which racism, race and crime might be better understood. It traces the historical origins of how thinking about crime came to be associated with racism and how fears and anxieties about race and crime become rooted in places destabilized by rapid social change. The book questions whether race and ethnicity alone are significant enough factors to explain differing offending and victimization patterns between ethnic groups.

Issues examined include:

Focusing on the lives of first- and second-generation British Pakistani young adult men and those approaching middle age who offend or have offended and the experiences of their fathers bringing them up in a de-industrialised city, this book examines the influence of social relations on their moves toward and away from crime, particularly the impact of father-son relationships. It seeks to understand their transitions as they aged; the meanings they place on their ethno-cultural, social and economic marginalization; and the licit and illicit opportunities and constraints that influence their identity and social integration as well as their place in British society.

British Pakistanis and Desistance focuses on the distinct context, relations and situations in which British Pakistani young adult offending and desistance takes place, such as family formation, education, prison, neighbourhood change and long-term changes in the types, availability and quality of work. Sketching a ‘life-course’ approach, it locates desistance theory and its application within the relationship between biography and social structure, using a case study of entrepreneurial criminality as an attempt at recovery from deindustrialisation.

An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, desistance, social policy and to all those interested in the lived experience of British Pakistani men.

Focusing on the lives of first- and second-generation British Pakistani young adult men and those approaching middle age who offend or have offended and the experiences of their fathers bringing them up in a de-industrialised city, this book examines the influence of social relations on their moves toward and away from crime, particularly the impact of father-son relationships. It seeks to understand their transitions as they aged; the meanings they place on their ethno-cultural, social and economic marginalization; and the licit and illicit opportunities and constraints that influence their identity and social integration as well as their place in British society.

British Pakistanis and Desistance focuses on the distinct context, relations and situations in which British Pakistani young adult offending and desistance takes place, such as family formation, education, prison, neighbourhood change and long-term changes in the types, availability and quality of work. Sketching a ‘life-course’ approach, it locates desistance theory and its application within the relationship between biography and social structure, using a case study of entrepreneurial criminality as an attempt at recovery from deindustrialisation.

An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, desistance, social policy and to all those interested in the lived experience of British Pakistani men.

The disproportionate criminalisation and incarceration of particular minority ethnic groups has long been observed, though much of the work in criminology has been dominated by a somewhat narrow debate. This debate has concerned itself with explaining this disproportionality in terms of structural inequalities and socio-economic disadvantage or discriminatory criminal justice processing. This book offers an accessible and innovative approach, including chapters on anti-Semitism, social cohesion in London, Bradford and Glasgow, as well as an exploration of policing Traveller communities. Incorporating current empirical research and new departures in methodology and theory, this book also draws on a range of contemporary issues such as policing terrorism, immigration detention and youth gangs. In offering minority perspectives on race, crime and justice and white inmate perspectives from the multicultural prison, the book emphasises contrasting and distinctive influences on constructing ethnic identities.

It will be of interest to students studying courses in ethnicity, crime and justice.

The disproportionate criminalisation and incarceration of particular minority ethnic groups has long been observed, though much of the work in criminology has been dominated by a somewhat narrow debate. This debate has concerned itself with explaining this disproportionality in terms of structural inequalities and socio-economic disadvantage or discriminatory criminal justice processing. This book offers an accessible and innovative approach, including chapters on anti-Semitism, social cohesion in London, Bradford and Glasgow, as well as an exploration of policing Traveller communities. Incorporating current empirical research and new departures in methodology and theory, this book also draws on a range of contemporary issues such as policing terrorism, immigration detention and youth gangs. In offering minority perspectives on race, crime and justice and white inmate perspectives from the multicultural prison, the book emphasises contrasting and distinctive influences on constructing ethnic identities.

It will be of interest to students studying courses in ethnicity, crime and justice.

In 21st century Britain the rich are protected while the poor punished. Rich Crime, Poor Crime shows how contemporary British society is founded on a legacy of past plunder and dispossession by elites against the rest. Over centuries, power and property have been consolidated in the hands of a few and coded in legal systems that favoured the rich and created extreme inequality.

Colin Webster puts a spotlight on Britain’s hereditary and new ruling classes, whose inherited entanglements in land ownership, war and conquest, new world slavery, finance, trade, industry and empire allow them to accumulate and grow capital and wealth at the expense of others. He reveals a system facilitated by political corruption and wealth that accommodates serious wrongdoing – such as corporate, banking and accounting fraud, money laundering and tax evasion – and does substantial harm to fellow Britons. Examining the conditions of extreme inequality that give rise to poor crime and rich crime – and to the social response to both types of crime – we find them to be deeply implicated one with the other.

Rich Crime, Poor Crime is vital reading for academics and professionals interested in the fields of history, sociology, criminology, and politics.

In 21st century Britain the rich are protected while the poor punished. Rich Crime, Poor Crime shows how contemporary British society is founded on a legacy of past plunder and dispossession by elites against the rest. Over centuries, power and property have been consolidated in the hands of a few and coded in legal systems that favoured the rich and created extreme inequality.

Colin Webster puts a spotlight on Britain’s hereditary and new ruling classes, whose inherited entanglements in land ownership, war and conquest, new world slavery, finance, trade, industry and empire allow them to accumulate and grow capital and wealth at the expense of others. He reveals a system facilitated by political corruption and wealth that accommodates serious wrongdoing – such as corporate, banking and accounting fraud, money laundering and tax evasion – and does substantial harm to fellow Britons. Examining the conditions of extreme inequality that give rise to poor crime and rich crime – and to the social response to both types of crime – we find them to be deeply implicated one with the other.

Rich Crime, Poor Crime is vital reading for academics and professionals interested in the fields of history, sociology, criminology, and politics.