Law and order has become a key issue throughout the world. Crime stories saturate the mass media and politicians shrilly compete with each other in a race to be the toughest on crime. Prisons are crammed to bursting point, and police powers and resources extended repeatedly. After decades of explosive increase in crime rates, these have plummeted throughout the Western world in the 1990s. Yet fear of crime and violence, and the security industries catering for these anxieties, grow relentlessly.


This book offers an up-to-date analysis of these contemporary trends by...