This book is a timely and wide-ranging account of the relationship between the development of a 'free market society' in Europe and North America and the fears and anxieties provoked by crime. It offers an evaluation of the theoretical schools in social theory and in criminology which continue to dominate the academy, but whose purchase on contemporary realities is everywhere slipping.

Ian Taylor is Principal of Van Mildert College, Durham University, formerly Professor of Sociology, University of Salford.