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Crime and Modernization Reexamined

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Louise I. Shelley
Louise I. Shelley*
Affiliation:
Schools of Justice and International Service American University
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Summary

This introductory essay concludes that a complex relationship exists between the process of economic development and crime. After examining the effect of development on developing and socialist societies, offender populations and the punitive response to crime, it is apparent that industrialization and urbanization have no consistent effect on crime across all societies. While industrialization and urbanization have resulted in important changes in crime patterns in many societies, as Crime and Modernization suggested, historical, cultural and political traditions are still of great importance in explaining observed crime patterns. Furthermore, certain research suggests that more limited societal changes may be more valuable in explaining crime causation than the overall process of development. But the understanding of the impact of larger social developments on crime is of critical importance to our understanding of the evolution of crime in the past two hundred years.

Résumé

Résumé

Cet essai introductif conclut à l'existence de relations d'interdépendance complexes entre le processus de développement économique et la criminalité. Après examen des effets du développement dans les états socialistes, notamment sur la population délinquante et sur les modes de répression du crime, il apparaît que l'influence de l'industrialisation et de l'urbanisation sur la criminalité n'est pas identique pour toutes les sociétés. Bien que pour beaucoup d'entre elles, industrialisation et urbanisation aient été à l'origine de profonds changements dans la typologie de la criminalité, comme le démontre «Crime et Modernization», les traditions historiques, culturelles et politiques gardent une place importante dans l'explication de ces nouvelles structures criminelles. D'ailleurs certaines recherches démontrent que les modifications sociales ponctuelles peuvent être plus précieuses pour expliquer l‘étiologie du crime que ne l'est le processus global du développement. Cependant, saisir l'impact des grandes forces socio-économiques sur le crime est d'une importance cruciale pour comprendre l‘évolution de la criminalité depuis deux siècles.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
International Annals of Criminology , Volume 24 , Issue 1-2 , 1986 , pp. 7 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 International Society for Criminology

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Footnotes

*

The Research for this article was done white the author was on a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.

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