Crime and Modernization - The Impact of Industrialization and Urbanization on Crime

• NCJ Number: 76103
• Author(s): L I Shelley
• Date Published: 1981
• Length: 196 pages
• Sale Source: Southern Illinois University Press
• Publication Type: Survey (Cross-Cultural)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Science and International Affairs series.

Annotation

Examining the effect of modernization on crime in developing, developed capitalist, and socialist countries, this volume synthesizes a broad body of information and draws some tentative conclusions on how social and economic forces affect crime and criminals.

Abstract

The book begins with an examination of the causes of both adult and juvenile crime. It then presents a historical perspective, showing that the relationship between urbanization and crime was established long before the advent of modernization. Literature of the 19th and 20th centuries is reviewed to delineate crime patterns associated with the beginning of modernization, and present-day international crime patterns are examined with a focus on the geographical distribution of criminality, the offender population, and the efforts made to control the problem of crime. Investigations of crime in both developing and developed countries indicate that the crime patterns of these societies have continued to evolve in the direction initiated during the first phases of 19th century modernization. In addition, crime in socialist societies, primarily the Soviet Union and those Eastern European countries for which criminological data are available, is examined. It is concluded that crime patterns are predictable and that only the modernization theory of criminality makes it clear why criminal behavior in developed countries is characterized by an increase in property crime and a relative decrease in violent crime not associated with property crime. The general rise in the crime rate and its concentration in the urban environment are explained by the greater availability of goods, the increased feasibility of crime commission, and increased feelings of relative deprivation because of a greater gap between rich and poor or a greater awareness of deprivation due to advertising through the media. Further, the growth in female and juvenile participation in crime is accounted for by the increased participation of women in activities outside the home and by the decline of an established role for juveniles in society. A total of 108 notes and a selected bibliography of about 250 citations are given. (Author abstract modified).