No abstract

Abstract. Radical criminology is often dismissed on the claim that it is not empirically verifiable. In this paper we argue that grounding the radical approach in Marx's theory of surplus values creates an empirically testable Marxian theory applicable to understanding rates of criminal offending and official responses to criminal behavior. Our analysis demonstrates that the rate of surplus value is a statistically significant predictor of the rate of property crimes known, property crime arrests, violent crimes known, violent crime arrests and total index crimes known to police in the U.S. from 1950 to 1974 controlling for the effects of predictor variables identified in earlier research on crime rates. The theoretical implications of this finding and the importance of the theory of surplus value to the development of radical criminology are also discussed.

This article attempts to reconcile structural and subjective approaches to the study of crime. Materials supporting reconciliation include (a) a review of the broader traditions from which structuralism and subjectivism emerged, (b) an assessment of the strengths and limitations of structuralism and subjectivism, (c) arguments supporting the desirability of a combined structural/subjective approach, and (d) an analysis of structuralism and subjectivism as they appear in the 1988 book by Jack Katz, titled Seductions of Crime.

No abstract

No abstract