Crime Control As Industry

Download or read book Crime Control as Industry written by Nils Christie and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christie argues that crime control, rather than crime itself, is the real danger for our future. He documents the forces driving the prison industry in Europe and the United States, offering an explanation of increased incarceration rates in the 1980s and 1990s. The growing use of prisons has paralleled two important social changes, both with a potential for unrest : the increasingly unequal distribution of wealth, and restriction of access to well-paid work. Instead of attempting to deal with these problems through positive social changes, developed countries have called on the crime control industry to deal with the consequences. The desire for security, stability, and predictability among the more affluent elements of society has fuelled the willingness of politicians and policymakers to make huge investments in the crime control industry, particularly its most costly feature, prisons and jails. The book shows how trends in the use of imprisonment have risen and fallen over time, and it traces this to underlying societal values as to what is right and fair in the treatment of other human beings. It is finally such values that will determine the limits societies will choose to impose on the crime control industry. Thoughts, values, and ethics, not the drive for profit, must ultimately determine the limits of control.