Urbanization and Crime
Urbanization and Crime
This 1995 book contributes to both modern German history and to the sociological understanding of crime in modern industrial and urban societies. Its central argument is that cities, in themselves, do not cause crime. It focuses on the problems of crime and criminal justice during Germany's period of most rapid urban and industrial growth - a period when Germany also rose to world power status. From 1871 to 1914, German cities, despite massive growth, socialist agitation and non-ethnic German immigration, were not particularly infested with crime. Yet the conservative political and religious elites constantly railed against the immoral nature of the city and the German governmental authorities, police, and court officials often overreacted against city populations. In so doing, they helped to set Germany on a dangerous authoritarian course.
- Most rigorous, social-scientific study to date demonstrating that neither urban environments themselves nor the change in modern societies from rural to urban cause crime
- Illustrates how Germany's overconcern for order heightened police powers, curtailed individual liberties, and paved the way for Nazism
- Examines women as criminals and victims in a modernising society
Product details
July 2002Paperback
9780521527002
260 pages
229 × 152 × 15 mm
0.39kg
14 b/w illus. 2 maps 38 tables
Available
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Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. The criminal justice system: safe streets in a well-organized police state
- 2. Popular opinion: crime as a 'foreign' concept
- 3. Long-term trends: the modernization of crime and the modernization of German society
- 4. Urban-rural difference, ethnicity and hardship: cities are not to blame
- 5. Criminals and victims: the crucial importance of gender
- 6. Conclusion: crime rates, crime theories and German society.
