This book is a timely and wide-ranging account of the relationship between the development of a "free market society" in Europe and North America and the fears and anxieties provoked by crime. It offers an evaluation of the theoretical schools in social theory and in criminology which continue to dominate the academy, but whose purchase on contemporary realities is everywhere slipping.
Crime in Context begins with an analysis of nine different crises or transformations which define the parameters of social and economic change. It then develops an alternative criminology for analysing crime and the fear of crime in current circumstances, including specific chapters on youth crime (with analyses of the pressing issues of drugs, alcohol and violence, as well as of the victimization of young people by crime), the social and cultural geography of urban crime and urban fear, the temptations of crime in free market societies, and the significance of the new-found provenance of firearms and other weapons in a market society. In three comprehensive concluding chapters, Taylor's argument about the influence of market relations is applied to the marketing of social control (the ever-increasing growth of the industries in crime prevention) and also to the markets in actually occurring professional or semi-professional crime.
A major new work by one of the leading scholars in the field, this book will be essential reading for students in criminology, urban studies, social policy and sociology.
