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.

Le développement, en Afrique, a eu des incidences sur la criminalité à deux niveaux: le premier est celui de la transformation du droit et le deuxième, celui de l'érosion des anciennes formes de contrôle social, beaucoup plus efficaces que les nouvelles. Avec la colonisation, puis avec la mise en place des gouvernements autchtones, des codes pénaux ont été promulgués dans le but d'unifer, à l'intérieur de chaque État, les multiples ethnies. Par cette unification nationale, on a balayé les formes traditionnelles de pouvoir, à la fois politique et juridique. Comme les populations africaines sont, à 75%, agricoles et rurales, on a vu se superposer deux types de droit: celui des villes, d'inspiration occidentale, et celui des campagnes, fidèle aux traditions. Par là même, les Africains se sont trouvés en situation d'anomie. Ce qui a eu des conséquences à la fois sur la genèse de la criminalité et à la fois sur une sous-utilisation des institutions pénales étatiques. Par ailleurs, le

The arrest frequencies and distributions for nine serious crimes reported in official statistics in the United States and India are analyzed to assess how economic development may be associated with various factors that are believed to directly influence rates of criminality and criminalization. Compared to Americans, the arrest proportions of women and juveniles in India are extremely low. In addition, Indian women differ substantially from American women in terms of the distribution of arrests accross the nine offenses while the arrest patterns of juveniles were quite similar. It is argued that these differences in arrest proportions and patterns reflect actual differences in behavior and societal (official) reaction to the criminality of women and juveniles in the two countries. In this regard, the arrest frequencies of women and juveniles in India are low because they have comparatively fewer opportunities or reasons to deviate and, even if they do, their behavior is likely to be treated in an informal, unofficial manner. To the extent that these socio-interactional dimensions are related to a country's level of economic development, variations in crime rates across societies ultimately may be explained by the influence of economic forms and levels of development.

Historical research in Boston suggests that developing cities exhibit a regular progression from wayward delinquency through incorrigible delinquency to contracultural delinquency, as they develop from an early industrial, to a mature industrial, to a post-industrial stage.

Wayward Delinquency is committed by youthful migrants to developing cities who have no established roots. They wander the city commiting minor crimes, and as the city develops their numbers grow rapidly. Incorrigible delinquency arises when the city institutes compulsory education and other mechanisms for socializing children to industrial society. Many children cannot accept the discipline of these new structures and rebel 'against them. In addition pathologic families begin to appear as the rigors of urban individualism overwhelm a small portion of the city's inhabitants. Their children in turn often display a pattern of delinquency that reflects their pathogenic origins. Contracultural delinquency emerges when these rebellious and defiant children coalesce into iconoclastic gangs scornful of conventional values and careers.

The major cities of China and India are developing some symptoms of wayward delinquency, but much of Latin America and Africa seem to be midway between wayward and incorrigible delinquency. Japan is moving rapidly toward contracultural delinquency, and many cities of the West are already there.

One of the primary problems facing comparative criminologists is the determination of the critical by which countries will be grouped for study. Some researchers have chosen to focus their study on development and modernization and have used these criteria to place countries among developed, underdeveloped and socialist countries.

The Cuban development process illustrates the difficulty of grouping countries or assigning direct linkages between crime and modernization. Cuba lies between the socialist model and that of the developing countries of the Third World. While Cuba is undeniably a socialist state it is at least as influenced by its Latin American roots and economic dependency as it is by its ideology. This, in turn, is reflected in the way crime is perceived and defined.

The purpose of this article is to review the effect of conditions associated with the revolutionary process on criminalization and repression decisions. Space limitations and the unreliability of much of the data do not permit a discussion of all crimes so that we will focus on selected offenses and the impact which the new socialist system have had on their criminalization. The following factors shall be considered: 1) the new distribution of goods and the means of production; 2) the need to maintain systemic legitimacy and political stability; 3) economic development measures; 4) repudiation of conduct associated with capitalist corruption. This analysis shall also take into account the effect of Cuban culture on these decisions.

The present article examines the participation of women in thre forms of crime and deviance: traditional female deviance (e.g. prostitution) conventional crime (e.g. against private property or violent crime) and non-conventional crime, specific to the organization of the economy in these countries (e.g. speculation, appropriation of state property, etc.). Using the existing statistical data and research findings, it is shown that, despite radical social change, Polish and Soviet women continue to be grossly under-represented in convictions for so-called conventional crime. Their share in convictions for nonconventional crime, however, appears to be unusually high. To understand these findings it is necessary to realize that, despite their occupational and educational liberation, women still remain both the primary socialization agents and homemakers. This double burden imposed by family and occupational roles as well as their responsibility to transmit moral and patriotic values make women less susceptible to violations of traditional ethnical codes and religion-based mores. As well as being too involved in life's responsibilities, social controls such as the Church and informal control systems monitor them too closely to allow for overt involvement in criminal life styles. Yet, unconventional economic crime presents women with new criminal opportunities, free of conventional criminal stigma and consistent with their occupational roles. Employment provides women the opportunity to engage in economic and fiscal offences which are not regulated by the traditional ethics and, therefore, do not openly conflict with their traditional role as socialization agents.

The relationship between female crime rates and the status of women is examined using information from 43 nations around the world. Hypotheses derived from four major theories — equality, opportunity, economic, and social disorganization - are tested, as well as variations of equality theory (emancipation, sex-role differentiation, and status of women) which lead to different predictions. Correlations are computed for variables reflecting the status of women and general levels of development and disorganization across these nations and two dependent measures of female arrest rates — level and distribution. Caveats concerning the quality of the data are discussed and the difficulty in separating the effects of equality from opportunity and each from the overall effects of modernization is noted.

Relationships to male crime are neither unidimensional nor simple. While equality, emancipation, and status of women theories received support, economic theory focusing on the participation of women in the labor force did not. Moreover, social, political and biological equality affect female arrest rates differently. Increases in social equality are related to increases in property crimes (larceny, fraud, and counterfeiting), but to decreases in sex crimes. Increases in political equality are related to increases in property crimes and increases in biological equality to increases in female arrests for murder.

This article describes the lengthy and complicated process of developing the three Unided Nations crime trends surveys, starting from the early comparative studies in the late 1940's to the later survey of crime trends, operations of criminal justice systems and crime prevention strategies undertaken in 1982, all of which have remained rather unnoted in the criminological literature. Both the substantive and methodological aspects of these surveys are discussed in order to trace the changing emphasis of these surveys from a principally one-dimensional, legalistic undertaking to multidimensional, “developmental” analyses. Let it be emphasized that these recurrent surveys meet an oft-expressed request by Member States for broad cross-national analyses of crime trends and have become over time more encompassing, illustrative and systemic. Some of the major results of these surveys are presented here. Finally, the author suggests that despite specific shortcomings which exist in cross-national analyses of crime trends and operations of criminal justice systems, such analyses are nonetheless very useful in selecting particular policies. To this end, the results of the Second United Nations Survey (1975-1980) will be submitted for consideration and action to the Seventh United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders to be held in Milan, Italy, 26 August - 6 September 1985.

The different theoretical perspectives concerning the severity of punishment are presented (Durkheim, Sorokin, Rusche and Kirchheimer) and discussed in the light of a comparative analysis of 55 nations. It indicates that social structural variables as well as the level of socio-economic development and the form of government (democratic or dictatorial) have a very clear impact on the type of punishments used and the law (notably as concerns the death penalty). Conversely, social inequality and unemployment have a strong influence on the level of imprisonment in a country. It seems that political and economic crises cause a rapid increase in the severity of the penal system. The concept of a legitimation crisis of the established order (Weber, Heintz) seems the most suitable interpretation for the variations in penal severity across societies and historical periods.

This paper examines an apparent contradiction in recent comparative research on crime. Most quantitative studies assume that social-structural variables which cause crime operate uniformly across different crime types — for example, income inequality increases both murder and theft rates. However, our review of this research, and our own multivariate analysis of murder and theft rates in 47 countries, suggest that social-structural variables have opposite effects on murder and theft rates. The most important predictor of both murder and theft in our analysis is population growth. Drawing on case studies and comparative essays, we offer a preliminary theoretical explanation for the opposite effects of social-structural variables — especially population growth — on murder and theft. This explanation is based on variations in the opportunities and incentives for murder and theft in developing and developed countries. We suspect that population growth measures the strength of primary group relations; that societies characterized by frequent and intense interaction between primary group members provide many opportunities for murder, but because of effective surveillance, few opportunities for theft.

Using longitudinal data, the paper examines the relationships between economic conditions and crime in Australia. The gross domestic product per capita and the unemployment rate have been used as the two indicators of the economy, and offences charged before magistrate's courts and burglaries reported to police, were used as indicators of crimes. The analysis, both of major categories of offences and burglary, show that different periods in the present century have had a varied impact on types of crimes. A major finding suggests that property crimes increase sharply in situations when the economy received a major set back like the great Depression, as well as when it is growing at a very fast rate. Also the study reveals that the increase in burglaries is closely linked with the growth in the economy and the production of, and accessibility to ever increasing consumer goods, have led to a shift in the targets of burglary, both in terms of the types of premises broken into and kinds of goods stolen. And finally, the burglary data for the present century do not show the existence of any cycles or regularities, nor does the present data show any lags.

Cross-national data are examined for possible relationships between violent crime and economic fluctuations. Sixteen cases are examined from a new archive of international data on homicide and four other offences for 110 nations and 44 major international cities for the period 1900-1972. A simple contextual hypothesis is proposed: that a nation's type of economic system determines whether or not changing economic system determines whether or not changing economic conditions will affect rates of violent crime. Preliminary analyses provide support for this hypothesis and suggest that the relationship between violence and the economy is not invariant but is instead contingent on qualitative features of a nation's economic system. Specifically, nations with more re distributive economic systems and policies designed to mitigate poverty and unemployment are less likely to experience increases in violence when unemployment increases.