Ian Taylor, a professor of sociology at Carleton University, Ottawa, is at present a visiting fellow at the Institute of Criminology in Cambridge. He is the author of Law and Order: Arguments for Socialism and of Crime, Capitalism and Community.
By no means the least significant consequence of the Conservatives’ adoption of an ‘authoritarian populist’ platform on law and order during the Election of 1979 was the pressure this put on the British Left to develop its own practical and ‘realistic’ policies with regard to the containment of crime. The only really interesting new development within British criminology during the Eighties (other than the resurrection of the idea of the ‘reasoning criminal’) has been the emergence of ‘left realist criminology’, with its insistence on the seriousness of street crime.
Earlier this year, the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, went on a 12-day tour of Africa. In Zambia he announced that China would build an economic co-operation zone in the country that would attract...
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