What is to be Done About Law and Order: Crisis in the Nineties

Examining contemporary notions of crime and criminology, this book proposes a rigorous, new left realism about the issues raised. The authors look at the causes and consequences of crime, the rise of violence, and the impact of racism, the inner city, poverty and unemployment. This updated edition, revised and with two new chapers, reconsiders the issues of law and order, identifying crime as something often caused by society's deceptions and inequalities but always directed towards selfishness and individualism. Lea and Young put forward an agenda for reversing the increasingly confrontational nature of crime and policing in Britain, and thus preventing political energies, which could be harnessed for a transformation of society, being channelled into ensuring its inertia.