Steven Box - Böcker

We are often told that unemployment is 'no excuse' for committing crimes. It certainly does not follow, as many in government would have use believe, that crime is unrelated to social conditions.Examining a mass of evidence from Great Britain, the United States, Canada and other industrialised countries, Steven Box shows how criminal activity increased with unemployment, poverty and sharpened competition between firms. He demonstrates that corporate as well as individual crime is affected by the experience of recession and that changing pressures and opportunities alter the character and distribution of deviance as well as increasing its incidence.Although deterioration in material circumstances does lead to more crime, however, it does not alone account for the massive increase in prison populations or increasingly repressive systems of social control. These developments, the author argues, flow more from government attempts to restructure the labour force and the natural reaction of minor state officials like judges, police and probation officers to the changing 'logic' of their situations.

Power, Crime, and Mystification is one of the classics of radical criminology -a compelling account of how power and powerlessness operate within the criminal justice system. Questioning the orthodox view that it is powerlessness that leads to serious criminal behaviour, Steven Box focuses on the serious crimes committed by those in positions of power and privilege, particularly in government agencies and multinational corporations. He also points out that some relatively powerless groups, such as women, hardly commit any serious crimes at all. He suggests that crime can be the extreme form of otherwise socially sanctioned behaviour and, in taking this approach, provides coherent answers to the questions How does a society define crime? and 'What is the difference between justice and social control?. A major implication of Steven Box's stimulating analysis is that definitions of serious crime, the criminal justice process, and government penal policies are all in need of review. So far these have been more concerned with regulating, controlling, and demoralizing relatively powerless groups than with tackling real crime.