NCJ Number
102612
Date Published
1986
Length
129 pages
Annotation
This book highlights the common themes of the various Marxist perspectives of radical criminology, particularly themes bearing upon state and law, crime concepts, crime causes, policing, the courts, and corrections.
Abstract
After tracing the rise of 'radical' criminology to Marxist perspectives in American academic circles that emerged from social unrest and racial injustice in the 1960's, the book reviews Marxist methods and concepts, which attack capitalism as a system dominated by an exploitative socioeconomic class that orders society to protect its interests. Marxist theories on state and law argue that the capitalist state and law represent the interests of the ruling class and reflect efforts to sanction and control behaviors of the underclass that threaten those interests. Laws, therefore, seldom proscribe the injurious economic and political behaviors of the ruling class. Under radical criminology's perspective, the police, courts, and corrections are extensions and instruments of ruling class efforts to order society to maintain the economic and political power of the dominant class. Radical criminology's perspectives of various criminological theories, such as conflict theory, labeling theory, and strain theory, are reviewed, followed by the short-term and long-term efforts of radical criminology to reform the American criminal justice system. A subject index and 346 references.